Here are the latest national COVID-19 trends, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and major wastewater surveillance providers:
- About 3.0 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending September 21. (Note that these are provisional data.)
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 26% between the week ending September 21 and the week ending September 14, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “moderate,” per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 13% between September 18 and September 25, per WastewaterSCAN.
- Nearly 10,000 people died from COVID-19 between mid-July and mid-September. (Note that these data are reported with delays and likely represent an undercount.)
In the U.S., COVID-19 spread remains on the decline across all parts of the country. While levels are still moderately high, this and the next couple of weeks are likely to have the lowest COVID-19 levels we see for a while (before an anticipated winter surge picks up). If you’ve been putting off appointments for a lower-spread period, this may be a slightly better time to get them in — but the risk of infection still remains.
Wastewater data from the CDC, WastewaterSCAN, and Biobot Analytics report decreasing SARS-CoV-2 levels in sewage across all regions. The CDC has shifted its assessment of COVID-19 activity to “moderate” (though note CDC levels are designed to make spread appear lower than it truly is), and WastewaterSCAN reports that national activity is at “medium” levels. Last week, I flagged that Biobot reported a potential increase in the Northeast; this week, the company revised its trends to show a decline in this region.
Hospitalizations and emergency department visits for COVID-19 also continue to decline, as they have since mid-August. These trends are currently based on a subset of hospitals that still report to the CDC. But we’ll get back more comprehensive data next month, as a new rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will require all facilities to report COVID-19, flu, and RSV cases starting November 1 — restoring a dataset that we had during the national public health emergency.
The CDC’s disease modeling center, which estimates state-by-state COVID-19 case trends based on emergency department visits, reported that infections are “declining or likely declining” in 45 states as of October 1. In a few states, infections are either stable or could not be modeled based on limited data, but no states currently have growing cases.
As we prepare for a likely winter surge in the U.S., important COVID-19 safety tools remain difficult to access. As of October 4, only 6.4% of adults have received updated COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC recently reported. Similarly, a study by CDC scientists and colleagues found that, between April 2022 and September 2023, fewer than half of seniors with COVID-19 diagnoses received antiviral medications.
Meanwhile, the avian flu H5N1 continues to add to the risks coming at us this fall and winter. Public health officials recently identified two H5N1 human cases among farm workers in California, bringing the total number of human cases in the U.S. to 16 this year. While people who work with animals remain at the highest risk, high-quality masks, improved ventilation, and other safety measures help to reduce the spread of influenza viruses as they do for SARS-CoV-2.
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