New York, Aug 21: A massive wave of Covid-19 infections has been seen across the US in recent weeks, mainly fuelled by the emergence of new variants and the summer season, according to media reports.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) wastewater dashboard, the level of viral activity in wastewater has reached its highest point since July 2022, reports Xinhua news agency.
This tracking method, which provides a more comprehensive picture of viral spread than traditional testing methods, indicated that nationally, wastewater viral activity levels for Covid are currently “very high”, the CDC’s latest surveillance report noted last week.
The situation was particularly dire in the western US, which has been identified as having the “highest wastewater viral activity levels” for Covid, according to the CDC.
The agency also reported a surge in emergency room visits and hospitalisations due to COVID-19 infections across the country.
In May, the hospitalisation rate was about one person per 100,000. However, by August 3, that figure had steadily risen to 4.2 per 100,000, according to the CDC’s surveillance system, which includes more than 300 acute care hospitals in 13 states.
The current surge has surpassed the heights of last summer and continues to grow, as extreme heat forces people to stay indoors, where the virus spreads more easily, and many precautions have been largely abandoned.
California and Arizona became focal points of concern during the summer surge. Both states are seeing substantial increases in infection rates. In California, data from 43 wastewater reporting sites showed COVID levels were high, comparable to the peak of the winter surge earlier this year, the report said.
The situation in Arizona is equally worrying, with a recent AZ Mirror report indicating that the KP.3 variant has become the dominant strain, accounting for more than 50 percent of all positive cases in the state.
Public health experts attributed this latest surge to a group of FLiRT sub-variants, which are proving to be the most contagious since the pandemic began in 2020.
According to a recent Yale Medicine report, Omicron’s sub-variant, FLiRT strains, were responsible for the majority of Covid-19 cases in the US in early July.
One of the dominant FLiRT sub-variants, KP.3.1.1, has displayed greater contagiousness than its predecessors. CDC data showed that this variant caused 27.8 percent of infections in the country, up from 14.4 percent in a span of just two weeks.
Other factors contributing to this surge include increased human mobility during the summer months and hot weather. Western states, in particular, are grappling with what experts call a “summertime surge” in Covid cases.
This surge was caused by this year’s record high temperatures and increased use of air conditioning, which can promote the spread of the virus by drying out the air. Higher temperatures forced people indoors, where the virus spread more quickly, leading to a surge in cases in the summer in areas suffering from extreme heat.
A recent report from Johns Hopkins University highlighted that Covid rates have increased during July and August every summer since 2020. Warm weather, combined with human behavior patterns and an easily mutating virus, creates the “perfect recipe” for a summer Covid peak, it said.
While the country is already seeing a rise in COVID cases, the impending start of the school year could potentially fuel a surge in cases over the summer, presenting a significant challenge for public health officials and school administrators.
In response to the surge, the CDC recommended that everyone over the age of six months should get an updated COVID booster, which is expected in the coming weeks. However, the effectiveness of existing vaccines against the KP.3 variant remains uncertain.
Preliminary findings suggested that this variant, like its relative KP.2, exhibited some resistance to antibodies generated by the most recent COVID vaccines.
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