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 0.9 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending July 12.
- COVID-19 test positivity increased slightly, from 4.8% of COVID-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending July 12 to 5.1% during the week ending July 19.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has increased 5% between the week ending July 12 and the week ending July 19, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “low,” per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater increased 3% between July 8 and July 15, and the national wastewater trend is “medium,” per WastewaterSCAN.
COVID-19 cases continue to increase across the U.S., with summer outbreaks spreading from the South and West Coast to other regions. So far, this summer’s wave appears less intense than we’ve seen in prior years, but limited data lead me to be wary of getting too optimistic.
National wastewater estimates from the CDC, WastewaterSCAN, and Biobot Analytics all report continued increases for SARS-CoV-2 in sewage through mid-July. While the South and West reported the most pronounced increases in June and early July, regional averages for the Northeast and Midwest are going up, too, in the most recent data.
Notably, the CDC’s wastewater dashboard actually reported slight decreases for the South’s and West’s averages between July 12 and July 19. But these data are preliminary and go against trends from other sources; they may be a result of delays in data reporting or differences in availability between testing sites, rather than actual decreases.
Emergency department data and test positivity (from the CDC as well as Walgreens) also report continued increases in COVID-19 spread across the U.S. in mid-July. The CDC’s infectious disease forecasting center, which utilizes emergency department data, estimates that COVID-19 cases are “growing or likely growing” in 26 states as of July 22 — including states across the Eastern half of the country — and not declining in any states.
Both wastewater and healthcare system metrics are reporting much lower levels for July 2025 than July 2024. But last year saw an unusually high summer wave, and current metrics are not far off reports from July 2023; they’re also several times higher than the true lows we saw in 2020 and 2021. We also still don’t have a good picture of how variants are spreading, as the CDC has not updated its variant estimates since late June due to very few test samples getting sequenced.
Some commentators have downplayed recent trends: Your Local Epidemiologist called this summer’s wave “wimpy” in a recent headline. Such portrayals make light of the ongoing severe impacts from COVID-19 — new and worsened Long COVID cases, among other hits to our collective health. One recent study, published as a research letter in JAMA Network Open, found that life expectancy for California in 2024 was still significantly lower than in 2019.
