Here we come again: COVID-19 hospital admissions have increased in the U. S. The U. S. has been in the U. S. since early July in a small-scale echo of the last 3 summers.
With an updated vaccine in the coming months, the backlog of new hospitalizations this summer may just be a concern, but the number of patients is much lower than before. A look at what we know:
HOW MUCH IS THE PEAK?
For the week ending July 29, hospital admissions for COVID-19 were 9056. That’s an increase of about 12% from last week.
But we are far from the peaks, such as the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions at the beginning of January, the almost 45,000 at the end of July 2022 or the 150,000 admissions of the omicron increase of January 2022.
“It’s speeding up a little bit, but it’s not something we want to sound the alarm about,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Most likely, infections are also increasing, but knowledge is scarce. The federal government ended the public fitness emergency in May, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states are no longer tracking the number of positive results.
WHAT ABOUT THE DEAD?
Since the beginning of June, around 500 to 600 more people have died each week. The number of deaths appears to be solid this summer, though beyond the increases in deaths hospitalizations have been delayed.
HOW DO WE TRACK THE VIRUS?
The amount of the COVID-19 virus in wastewater has been expanding since last June across the country. In the coming weeks, fitness officials said they would closely monitor sewage levels as others return from summer trips and students return to school.
The highest grades of COVID-19 in wastewater concentrations are in the Northeast and South, said Cristin Young, an epidemiologist at Biobot Analytics, the CDC’s wastewater tracking contractor.
“It’s vital that concentrations at this time remain quite low,” Young said, adding that they were about 2. 5 times lower than last summer.
And while one edition of omicron, EG. 5, seems more prevalent, no specific variant of the virus is dominant. The variant has been dubbed “eris,” but it’s an unofficial nickname and scientists use it.
“There are some that we monitor, but we don’t see anything like delta or omicron,” Young said, referring to the variants that drove the surges in the past.
And mutations in the virus don’t necessarily make it more dangerous.
“Just because we have a new subvariant doesn’t mean we’re destined to generate bad outcomes,” Dowdy said.
WHEN DOES THE NEW VACCINE COME?
This fall, officials expect to see updated COVID-19 vaccines containing an edition of the omicron strain, called XBB. 1. 5. That’s a significant substitution for today’s mixed injections, which combine the original strain of the coronavirus with last year’s non-unusual peak omicron. variants.
It’s unclear exactly when other people may start rolling up their sleeves for what officials hope will be an annual fall COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer, Moderna and smaller manufacturer Novavax are preparing doses of the XBB update, but the Food and Drug Administration will have to approve each, and the CDC will have to factor in recommendations for its use.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new director of the CDC, said she hopes other people will get vaccinated against COVID-19 instead of getting a flu shot (in pharmacies and workshops) than in compromised locations that were established early in the pandemic as a component. of emergency response.
“This will be our first fall and winter season after the public fitness emergency, and I think we all recognize that we are living with COVID, flu and RSV,” Cohen told The Associated Press last week. “But the news is that we have more equipment than ever. “