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 2.2 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending September 20.
- COVID-19 test positivity decreased significantly, from 7.9% of COVID-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending September 20 to 6.7% during the week ending September 27.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater decreased 36% between September 17 and September 24, and the national wastewater trend is “medium,” per WastewaterSCAN.
COVID-19 data are limited this week due to the government shutdown, now the second time that vital disease surveillance has been interrupted since Trump took office in January. The CDC has not updated the majority of its COVID-19 and respiratory disease data pages since September 26. An estimated 41% of workers at the federal Department of Health and Human Services (the CDC’s parent agency) are furloughed during the shutdown; this likely includes people who work on tracking COVID-19 and other diseases at the CDC.
Still, we are not entirely without information, largely thanks to independent data services and researchers. The CDC did update a handful of national-level COVID-19 metrics last Friday. WastewaterSCAN and Biobot Analytics have continued sharing wastewater surveillance data on their regular update schedules. And epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers (whom I recently interviewed) combed through state health department websites to report state-level trends.
Based on those available national and regional metrics, COVID-19 levels appear to be declining across the U.S. as we continue to come down from the country’s summer-into-early-fall wave. WWSCAN and Biobot Analytics both report consistent decreases for SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater, nationally and for all regions. National test positivity and emergency department visits have also declined over the last month.
I noted last week that I was concerned COVID-19 levels might go back up in the Northeast and Midwest; while it’s difficult to assess with limited data, I am now watching the Northeast in particular. WWSCAN characterizes SARS-CoV-2 levels in the Northeast as “high” as of late September, compared to “medium” in the rest of the country. Rivers also flagged in her state-by-state update that COVID-19 activity is “moderate but stubborn” in Connecticut, rising in New Jersey, and “elevated compared to the off season” in Vermont.
In better state-level news, though, SARS-CoV-2 levels for West and South states that saw the highest disease spread this summer are still significantly declining, at least based on the data we have available. Viral levels in California’s wastewater are back to “low” in the state public health department’s latest update (as of October 3). And in Louisiana, test positivity has declined from a high of 17% in the week ending August 16 to 4% in the week ending September 27.
To find data for your area, I recommend Rivers’ newsletter as well as state and local wastewater dashboards (I just updated this list of dashboards today). I also recently learned about a newer dashboard called PopHIVE from the Yale School of Public Health, which compiles infectious disease data from the CDC as well as independent sources. If you have other data source recommendations or questions about how to find information during this government shutdown, please reach out.
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[…] other infectious disease data continue to be very limited while the U.S. government is shut down. Last week, the CDC updated a couple of national COVID-19 metrics; this week, the agency didn’t even update […]