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 1.3 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending January 31.
- COVID-19 test positivity stayed about the same, with 5.4% of COVID-19 tests returning positive results during both the weeks ending January 24 and January 31.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater increased 5% between January 24 and January 31, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “moderate,” per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater decreased 1% between January 21 and January 28, and the national wastewater trend is “high,” per WastewaterSCAN.
- Healthcare visits for influenza-like illness decreased 7% between the week ending January 24 and the week ending January 31, and this metric remains at a high level.
The U.S.’s long winter COVID-19 wave continues. Major national metrics are at plateaus as of late January, as disease levels increase in some regions and decrease in others. In better news, flu levels are declining again, after an uptick last week.
Wastewater data from the CDC and Biobot Analytics report that SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater are going up again in the Midwest after a high peak there around New Year’s. WastewaterSCAN reports a slight increase in the Midwest through January 23 followed by a decrease later that month, but recent data are preliminary and may change. Some Midwest states with their own wastewater dashboards, such as Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, are also reporting potential increases and high levels.
WWSCAN and Biobot also report increasing viral levels in wastewater in parts of the South, as do some state-level dashboards; the CDC reports a slight decrease for this region in preliminary data. And the CDC reports a potential increase in the Northeast, too. The West is the only region where SARS-CoV-2 levels in sewage have stayed relatively low so far this winter: California’s wastewater dashboard has reported a “very low” statewide average viral level since October.
However, there are signs of potential COVID-19 increases in the Northwest. Health region 10, which includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, has reported increasing COVID-19 test positivity in late January. (Test positivity is either at a plateau or slowly decreasing in all other health regions.) Washington also has “likely growing” COVID-19 cases, according to the CDC’s infectious disease forecasting center.
Besides Washington, all states with estimated “growing or likely growing” COVID-19 cases (as of February 3) are in the Midwest, South, and Southwest: Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The forecasting center also estimates that cases are “declining or likely declining” in nine states, mostly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
Meanwhile, flu levels are trending back down nationally after an increase last week. But these levels remain high across the U.S., with many states reporting “high” and “very high” levels of healthcare visits for flu-like illness (which the CDC defines as a fever plus cough and/or sore throat). States in the South, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest have the highest flu-like illness levels as of late January.
Measles also continues spreading in the U.S., and the latest hotspots for this disease are immigration detention centers. “This is a major public health issue” because detention centers are “an ideal environment for the spread of measles,” political anthropologist Eric Reinhart told The Guardian. He, like other health experts and scholars, called for ending immigration detention: “Abolish ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which is basically a state terror organization.”
