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 2.6 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending October 5. (Note that these are provisional data.)
- COVID-19 test positivity has decreased 17%, from 7.6% of COVID-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending October 5 to 6.3% of tests during the week ending October 12.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 18% between the week ending October 5 and the week ending October 12, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “low,” per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 30% between October 2 and October 9, per WastewaterSCAN.
The U.S. continues to be in a lull of moderate COVID-19 spread between the summer and winter surges. While disease levels may be somewhat lower than this time last year (according to wastewater surveillance), they are still much higher than the true periods of low spread we experienced in 2020 and 2021.
Wastewater surveillance data from the CDC, WastewaterSCAN, and Biobot Analytics all suggest that coronavirus levels in our wastewater are declining across all or most of the country. Healthcare system data present a similar picture: COVID-19 hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and the rate of positive tests all continue to decline nationally.
The CDC’s disease forecasting center, which estimates COVID-19 trends based on emergency department visits, reports that infections are “declining or likely declining” in 37 states and “not changing” in 11 states as of October 15. Infections are not growing in any states, continuing a pattern of consistent decrease for the last few weeks.
However, this current lull may end soon. The CDC reported that SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater increased in the Northeast during the week ending October 12. These are provisional data, and could be impacted by a reporting delay for sites in New York State this week. But it’s something I’ll keep an eye on in the coming weeks. Flu season is also starting, as seen with a slight increase in doctor’s visits for respiratory illness over the last two weeks.
It’s also important to remember that lulls between surges, at this point in the ongoing pandemic, come with more COVID-19 spread than we experienced in earlier years. For example, WastewaterSCAN reported about 130 copies of coronavirus nucleic acids as its normalized national average for October 9, 2024; that’s about six times as high as the national average on March 9, 2022, following the first Omicron wave, and ten times as high as the average on June 9, 2021.
As we prepare for another winter of COVID-19, vaccines — now one of our only remaining collective health measures — are very underutilized. Only 12% of adults and 4% of children had received updated COVID-19 vaccines as of October 12, per the CDC. The agency also reported this week that vaccination rates are falling for required vaccines in kindergarten, a concerning trend for other areas of public health.
Leave a Reply