Coronavirus spiking in wastewater in California, Florida and Texas as cases rise

Seven we Each state has a “very high” level COVID In wastewater It is estimated that The announcement was made Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That marks the first time this summer that levels have reached the agency’s “high” category. California, Nevada, Oregon, TexasArkansas, FloridaMaryland was the state with the highest levels. According to CDC data:.

“We’re seeing a pattern that’s consistent with observations from the last two summers, where the increase in activity during this time is not as great as during the winter peak,” said Aaron Hall, deputy director of science at the Canadian National Oceanographic Institute. CDCCoronaviruses and other respiratory viruses division, He told CBS News.

In the San Francisco Bay area, the number of COVID-19 cases is similar to the most recent winter surge, when COVID-19 cases typically peak annually, according to separate data from Stanford University’s WastewaterSCAN project.

The levels were “higher than this time last year and, on average, as high as during the winter peak earlier this year,” said Amanda Bidwell of WastewaterSCAN. He told KQED.

Meanwhile, 26 states and Washington, D.C.Significant increaseThe number of emergency outpatient visits due to the new coronavirus has reached “1 million.” The national proportion of emergency outpatient visits due to the new coronavirus has increased by 115% from last month, reaching the highest level since February.

Nationwide, The test positivity rate for the week ending July 6 was 11%.That’s up from 9 percent the previous week.

Seventy percent of infections over the past month have been caused by the KP variant, which is derived from the JN.1 strain, one of the so-called FLiRT variants. According to an Axios analysis of CDC data:The FLiRT strain is Omicron, Yale University School of Medicine report.

Combination of Record-breaking summer travelMore people gathering indoors to avoid the heat is also likely contributing to the rise in cases.Experts say previous immunity may have kept hospitalizations and deaths overall lower than during other surges despite the summer surge.

About 95% of the population “now has identifiable antibodies to omicron, particularly the omicron variant, so that’s really good herd immunity and it’s preventing us from having high rates of hospitalization,” said Dr. Eileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine.

But this immunity is “only about 45% effective at preventing mild or moderate illness because of the mutations that these new strains have,” she said. Said Miami Herald.