Covid is surging across the US, with levels of the virus on track to exceed last summer’s wave nationally and approaching the peak of last winter’s wave in the west, according to wastewater
data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Yet vaccination and antiviral uptake, plagued by inequitable access, have remained low, and other precautions like mask-wearing are being met with increasing resistance.
“A lot of people right now are getting Covid all over the country,” said Dr Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. “There are still hospitalizations, and there’s still a few hundred deaths every week in the US – and that’s a tragedy.”
The rise is being driven by a trio of variants, called Flirt because of shared mutations, that seem to be more immune-evasive and transmissible. And much of the US has been locked in heatwaves, with many Americans staying indoors to avoid the heat – which can lead to more spread of the virus.
Nationally, emergency room visits for Covid increased by
15.7% in the past week. Rising
hospitalization rates are now higher than last summer at this time, although it can be difficult to make comparisons now that significantly fewer hospitals are required to report rates of Covid than in previous years.
Deaths are also increasing after reaching the lowest point of the pandemic. Nearly 400 people died in the week ending 12 June, the last week for which full
data was available. Covid remains the
fourth-leading cause of death in the United States.
“Any hospitalization or death could be completely prevented based on the tools that we have,” Chin-Hong said.
Yet compared to other surges, “it just feels like a very different time right now”, said David Grabowski, professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School. “It’s pretty rare to go into a building and see people masked” – even in hospitals and nursing homes.
The summer surge comes as some federal and state policies have pulled away from efforts that can stop the spread of the virus, experts say.
North Carolina recently signed into law
restrictions on wearing face masks in public, and officials in New York City and Los Angeles have
considered the same.
In May, the CDC loosened its guidelines for Covid isolation, recommending patients stay home until they are fever-free for 24 hours and symptoms are resolving – even if they’re still positive for the virus, during which time they are likely contagious.
While the US government once covered the costs of Covid vaccination, those costs shifted to the private market in 2023. A bridge program offering vaccines to uninsured people is ending next month, weeks before the updated booster will be available – which will likely exacerbate gaps in access to the lifesaving vaccines.
Only 22.5% of adults and 14.4% of children are
up to date on Covid vaccines – and the rate is even lower (13.3%) among pregnant people, despite the risks of
severe illness,
complications and
long Covid because of Covid infection during pregnancy.…….
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