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 1.9 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending October 19. (Note that these are provisional data.)
- COVID-19 test positivity has decreased 9%, from 5.5% of COVID-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending October 19 to 5.0% of tests during the week ending October 26.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 2% between the week ending October 19 and the week ending October 26, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “low,” per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 1% between October 16 and October 23, per WastewaterSCAN.
The U.S. remains at a moderate point between surges. Following two months of clear declines, COVID-19 metrics now indicate a plateau, suggesting we are unlikely to see disease spread get much lower before a widely-anticipated winter wave begins. As I’ve said in previous weeks, much more virus is circulating during this lull than during true lows earlier in the pandemic.
This plateau is consistent across wastewater data sources: the CDC and WastewaterSCAN both reported very small decreases in the national average SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater (2% from the CDC, 1% from WastewaterSCAN) between the last two weeks of October. Biobot Analytics no longer reports specific data points, but its latest weekly report also points to slowing decreases.
Hospitalization and testing data — from the hospitals and testing labs still consistently reporting to the CDC — show similar trends. For example, the national share of emergency department visits diagnosed as COVID-19 has been fairly consistent over the last couple of weeks: this metric went from 0.7% for the week ending October 12, to 0.6% for the week ending October 19, to 0.56% for the week ending October 19.
While most of the U.S. is experiencing a plateau in COVID-19 spread, parts of the Midwest and South may be starting to see an expected winter increase in infections. The CDC’s wastewater data report a slight increase in this region over the last week, and the agency’s state-by-state modeling estimates report infections are “growing or likely growing” as of October 29 in just four states: Illinois, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
I have to admit, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that infections haven’t started picking up more obviously yet. The U.S. is typically further into a late fall/winter surge by this point: current SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater are about half as high as they were at this time in 2022 and 2023, according to both the CDC and WastewaterSCAN. Emergency department visits and test positivity are also much lower than this time in 2022 and 2023.
It’s hard to explain why we’re seeing this pattern, but it could be a combination of a higher-than-typical summer surge for much of the U.S. and less competitive variants. Modeler JP Weiland recently observed on Twitter/X that the newer variant XEC has slowed in outcompeting other lineages, and may not impact transmission as much as other variants (like those that spread this summer). However, without significant changes to our collective behavior — eg. much more masking, testing, and isolating — a winter wave of some magnitude is still inevitable.
Leave a Reply