For the second week in a row, available data suggest that the current COVID-19 surge may be turning around, or at least heading for a plateau. But there’s still a lot of coronavirus going around—and this will likely remain true through the winter respiratory virus season.
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This week, the health department in New York City, where I live, announced that they’d identified new variant BA.2.86 in the city’s wastewater. I covered the news for local outlet Gothamist/WNYC, and the story got me thinking about how important wastewater surveillance has become for tracking variants.
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Last week, I introduced you to BA.2.86, a new Omicron variant that’s garnered attention among COVID-19 experts due to its significant mutations. We’ve learned a lot about BA.2.86 since last Sunday, though there are many unanswered questions to be answered as more research is conducted.
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This week, our limited COVID-19 data picture suggests that transmission may be starting to level off. But if BA.2.86 or another newer variant enters this high-spread environment, the outlook could get less rosy.
Read MoreLast week, several variant experts that I follow on Twitter started posting about a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, first detected in Israel. They initially called it Omicron BA.X while waiting for more details to emerge about the sequence; it’s now been named BA.2.86.
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The summer COVID-19 surge continues. While wastewater surveillance data suggest that transmission trends may be turning around in some places, the virus is largely still increasing across the U.S. New variants are on the horizon, too.
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All major COVID-19 metrics continue to increase in the U.S., as we deal with a late-summer surge. Wastewater surveillance suggests that current virus spread is on pace with the Delta surge in 2021, though other data sources are less reliable these days.
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National COVID-19 data are showing signs of a summer uptick in infections across multiple regions. Newer variants, summer travel, and holidays are likely contributing to this increase, though it’s hard to say if we will see a real surge or a continued shifting of the U.S.’s high COVID-19 baseline.
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The COVID-19 plateau continues, with hospital admissions and viral levels in wastewater (the two main metrics I’m looking at these days) both trending slightly down at the national level. Newer Omicron variants are still on the rise, but don’t seem to be impacting transmission much yet.
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COVID-19 spread continues to trend down in the U.S., though our data for tracking this disease is now worse than ever thanks to the end of the federal public health emergency. If newer Omicron variants cause a surge this summer, those increases will be hard to spot.
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