September 20, 2023 – The summer wave of COVID-19 may be peaking in parts of the U. S. According to U. S. Wastewater Monitoring.
Average levels of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, found in wastewater are down about 5% from last week, NBC News reported, providing wastewater sampling data from 257 national sites monitored through Biobot Analytics.
“Fingers crossed, this wave is stalling and possibly waning,” Cristin Young, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist at Biobot, told NBC News.
A lab at the University of North Carolina recently saw a decline among its 12 tracking sites, while other tracking systems are noticing an increase in the Midwest and Northeast, according to the news outlet.
Its national surveillance program, which includes 183 sites in 36 states, reports a decline in virus levels in wastewater.
“What we’re seeing now is kind of flattening,” Marlene Wolfe, PhD, an assistant professor of environmental fitness at Emory University and director of the WastewaterSCAN program, told NBC News. “We haven’t noticed a genuine slowdown yet. “
CDC is recently assessing COVID-19 activity and the spread of the virus based on wastewater surveillance, the rate of people hospitalized with COVID-19, and the rate of people who have died due to the disease. All of these measures are sometimes lagging signs of the effect of COVID-19 at the network level.
During the week ending Sept. 9, 20,538 people nationally were hospitalized with COVID, which equates to about six hospitalizations for every 100,000 more people. Hospitalizations have increased every week since late June.
Of the 3,227 counties tracked through the CDC, about 88% of them had low or declining hospitalization rates since last week. In 27 counties, the increase in hospitalizations was considered high: Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oregon. , Texas and Virginia.
SOURCES:
NBC News: “Covid is stabilizing in some parts of the country, despite a slight uptick in cases. “
Biobot Analytics: “Covid-19 Wastewater Surveillance in the United States”
CDC: “U. S. COVID-19 Hospitalizations, Deaths, Emergency Room Visits, and Test Positivity”Percentage Change in New Hospital Admissions Data Table, Data as of September 9, 2023. “
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