sataniccapitalist reblogged
(CNN) - It may be time to dust off the face masks and air purifiers. The US is in the midst of a significant Covid-19 wave, with viral activity levels in wastewater the highest they’ve been for a summer surge since July 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s wastewater dashboard. The CDC’s measure of national Covid viral activity in wastewater rose to 8.82 on August 10 – falling shy of a peak of 9.56 in July 2022. The CDC says the most recent data is incomplete and may change. Before it started rising again in May, it was at 1.36. “Currently, the COVID-19 wastewater viral activity level is very high nationally, with the highest levels in the Western US region,” Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance Program, said in an email. “This year’s COVID-19 wave is coming earlier than last year, which occurred in late August/early September.” Emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths are also ticking up, although not to the same extent as infections, according to the CDC’s Covid dashboard. As of the end of July, the CDC’s dashboard shows about 4are being hospitalized for Covid for every 100,000 people in a given area, up from a low in May of about one Covid hospitalization for every 100,000 people – the lowest level since the pandemic began. The CDC’s wastewater data closely aligns with what they’re seeing at the nationwide WastewaterSCAN network, too. “This is a very significant surge. The levels are very high. They’re the highest we’ve ever seen during a summer wave,” said Dr. Marlene Wolfe, an assistant professor of environmental health and public health at Emory University and a program director for WastewaterSCAN. “We’re detecting SARS-CoV-2 in 100 percent of our samples across the country right now.”