I’d like to give you—readers of the COVID-19 Data Dispatch—an opportunity to share your concerns about this latest stage of the pandemic and connect with others who feel similarly. So, I’m hosting a community event: a live Q&A in a private Slack server.
Nationally, official COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to trend slowly downward, suggesting that we’re in a high plateau of consistent virus spread. Reported cases have only declined by about 18% in the last month, while new hospital admissions have declined by 28%.
Sources and updates for the week of January 29 include wastewater surveillance in New York State, bivalent boosters vs. XBB.1.5, the potential end of the global health emergency, and more.
Following a pattern from the last couple of months, national COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continued to trend slightly downward this week—though local indicators suggest we may experience a fall surge soon.
It might appear that the U.S. reported a significant drop in COVID-19 cases last week, as the CDC’s numbers dropped to about 70,000 new cases a day last week from 87,000 new cases a day in the prior week. But in fact, the decline was likely exaggerated by Labor Day weekend, as testing labs and the public health workers who crunch data took time off.
This is my first COVID-19 Data Dispatch issue after my August hiatus! Here are a few updates on how that went and changes I’m thinking about for the publication going forward.
Over the past month, COVID-19 trends in the U.S. have been fairly consistent: disease spread has declined slowly around the country. Official case counts dropped from about 120,000 a day in the first week of August, to about 80,000 a day last week.