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 0.6 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending April 11.
- COVID-19 test positivity decreased slightly, from 1.9% of COVID-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending April 4 to 1.7% positive during the week ending April 11.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater decreased 10% between April 4 and April 11, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “very low,” per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater decreased 6% between April 1 and April 8 and the national wastewater trend is “medium,” per WastewaterSCAN.
COVID-19 levels continue to be on the lower end throughout most of the U.S., as we remain in a lull between waves. Variant trackers are closely following the lineage BA.3.2 (or “Cicada”); while it seems to not be driving widespread outbreaks yet, data are limited.
Wastewater data from the CDC, WastewaterSCAN, and Biobot Analytics all report the lowest national averages of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage in a couple of years. For WWSCAN, which has the most reliable long-term data, this is the lowest national average since spring 2022. Recent levels are still higher than the true lows we saw with widespread precautions earlier in the pandemic, but they are getting surprisingly close. (Still, there’s the caveat that the coronavirus’ continued evolution may have shifted the ratio of viral levels to actual infections since that time.)
These low SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater also persist across most of the U.S. Biobot and WWSCAN both report declines and/or lower levels in all four regions; WWSCAN’s average for the Northeast is declining again after an uptick in March. The CDC also reports low or very low wastewater viral activity levels in almost all states; here, the South continues to report higher levels than other regions, though the two states with the highest readings (West Virginia and Mississippi) may be skewed by limited testing.
National test positivity from the CDC’s lab surveillance system is the lowest it’s been in a couple of years, too. The national average has been under 3% (which I consider low) for the last month, and test positivity is also under 3% for all health regions in the latest data. And the CDC’s infectious disease forecasting center estimates that COVID-19 cases are “declining or likely declining” in 33 states, and “likely growing” in just one, Vermont.
BA.3.2 (“Cicada”) remains a damper on this good news. The variant continues to grow globally, and children continue to be overrepresented in publicly-shared sequences, suggesting that they could be more susceptible. But it’s not a huge presence in U.S. data yet — in part because the CDC’s variant pages are now only updated once a month.
JAMA’s medical news vertical published a helpful explainer about Cicada this week, reinforcing that experts are concerned about the variant but having a hard time following it. “As clinical testing and sequencing decline, we are losing the power to monitor viral evolution with high precision,” immunologist Yunlong Richard Cao told JAMA.
Meanwhile, there are other causes for illness going around right now, even as we have passed the end of flu season. CDC testing data, as well as wastewater data from WWSCAN and Biobot, warn of higher levels of the respiratory pathogens human metapneumovirus (HMPV), rhinovirus, and enterovirus and the gastrointestinal pathogens norovirus and rotavirus.
