As families prepare to gather for the holidays, a new COVID-19 map reveals the latest infection rates across the United States.
For the week ending December 14, 5.6 percent of tests nationwide came back positive, up from 5 percent the previous week.
Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Colorado, as well as Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois had the highest percentage of positive tests, at 7.3 percent in the week ending December 14.
There is a 6. 6 percent positivity rate in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana and Arkansas, while Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas had a 6. 3 percent positivity rate.
The Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, New York and New Jersey all had a five percent positivity rate. In all other states, fewer than five tests came back positive.
Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, as well as Florida and Alabama had, had the lowest positivity rate, with just 2.3 percent of tests coming back positive.
Nationwide, CDC data shows that across the country, 0.7 percent of visits to the ER were associated with COVID-19 on the week ending 14 December. New Mexico had the highest percentage these, at 2 percent. Kentucky followed with 1.4 percent, while 1.3 percent of ER visits in South Dakota and Indiana were associated with COVID-19. In New Hampshire and Arizona, 1.2 percent of ER visits were associated with the virus. And 1.1 percent of ER visits were associated with COVID-19 in Wisconsin, West Virginia, Maine, Kansas, Illinois and Colorado.
In all other states, less than 1. 1 of emergency room visits were COVID-related.
There were 254 COVID-19 deaths nationwide during the week ending December 14, down from 335 the week before but up from 179 deaths the week ending November 30.
The CDC is tracking COVID-19 levels in wastewater as part of its surveillance strategy to track the spread of the virus in communities. Infected people shed the virus in their feces, meaning wastewater monitoring may reveal increased infection rates sooner. clinical tests or hospitalizations.
“The point of viral activity in wastewater implies that the amount of virus in wastewater is minimum, low, moderate, maximum or very maximum. Levels of viral activity in wastewater can imply the threat of infection in an area “the CDC said.
Currently, New Mexico, Kansas, and New Hampshire have very high levels of SARS-CoV-2 in their wastewater. Nationally, levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater are moderate.
The world has been transformed by the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The prestige quo came to a halt when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, approximately four months after the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China.
Since the pandemic broke out, the WHO reports that around 777 million people have contracted the virus worldwide. Meanwhile, the disease has a global mortality rate of just under 1 percent globally, higher than common illnesses such as influenza.
At least 103 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States since the pandemic began. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that at least 1. 21 million people have officially died from the disease in the United States; The actual number of deaths is likely to be higher.
COVID-19 rates in the United States are expected to surge this winter holiday season.
The CDC recommends that people 6 months and older get vaccinated against COVID-19 this season, which is October 2024 through September 2025.
This is because vaccine coverage decreases over time and vaccines are updated to give other people the best coverage rather than new strains. A meta-analysis of seven studies on COVID-19, published by the medical journal Cureus in August 2023, found that unvaccinated people are 2. 46 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who are vaccinated.
The newest COVID-19 strain is called XEC, a subvariant of Omicron that is believed to be more transmissible, but milder than previous strains.
The CDC lists existing symptoms of COVID-19 as follows:
Many of these symptoms overlap with other illnesses, such as flu, which is why experts advise taking a test to find out what the illness is. These can be mailed to people’s homes for free.
A spokesperson for the CDC previously told Newsweek: “As of December 13, 2024, COVID-19 activity is beginning to increase from low levels in some areas of the nation. Based on CDC modeled estimates of epidemic growth, we predict COVID-19 illness to increase in the coming weeks, as it usually does in the winter.”
François Balloux, a professor of computational systems biology at University College London in England, previously told Newsweek: “There is no evidence, nor a specific explanation for why to believe, that XEC causes different symptoms than everyone else. SARS-CoV-2 that have been circulating recently. The XEC array is not expected to cause more (or less) severe symptoms than other lines that have recently been in circulation.
The CDC will continue tracking COVID-19 data. A spike in illnesses is expected over the coming weeks. However, this is not unusual in winter time.
Martha McHardy is a U. S. news reporter. founded in London, Unido. Se focuses on American politics and society. He has covered U. S. news extensively, adding the 2024 election and pro-Palestinian protests at U. S. universities. U. S. Martha joined Newsweek in 2024 from The Independent and had previously worked as a freelancer at The Sun, The Mirror and MyLondon. He graduated from Durham University and did his NCTJ at News Associates. You can contact Martha by sending an email to m. mchardy@newsweek. com. Languages: English.