When you thought COVID was a factor of the previous, this summer season’s surge ought to make you suppose twice. The entire Bay Space appears to be coming down with the virus today.
Native knowledge signifies the virus is spreading at excessive ranges in San Jose and most communities across the Bay Space and California. However regardless of close to record-high COVID ranges in wastewater and spiking positivity charges, different metrics present loads has modified and ensure the virus will not be almost as lethal because it as soon as was earlier than vaccines and coverings turned broadly obtainable.
Wastewater knowledge for San Jose exhibits the virus almost reached document excessive ranges within the metropolis’s sewer shed this week. It was brief by lower than one tenth of a p.c. The earlier document excessive was set through the first Omicron surge in January of 2022. Santa Clara County’s three different sewer sheds — Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Gilroy — all have excessive ranges of COVID, too, as of the primary few days of July.
Within the East Bay, COVID ranges are additionally rising as extra individuals contract the virus. Alameda County public well being officers stated this week that wastewater confirmed an uptick within the virus and urged individuals to take precautions.
Statewide, the COVID positivity price, that means the portion of COVID exams that come again optimistic, started spiking in June. On June 1, the positivity price was 4.1%. It had greater than doubled to 10.6% as of July 1, in keeping with knowledge launched Friday. The state is now lower than one proportion level from the extent it was throughout this winter’s COVID spike, when it reached simply over 11%.
The wastewater knowledge exhibits what medical doctors and well being care professionals are seeing day by day.
“We’re clearly in a swell of instances now,” stated Dr. John Swartzberg, scientific professor emeritus of infectious ailments and vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s Faculty of Public Well being. “Check positivity, that’s going manner up, emergency division visits are up, hospitalizations are up. So all of that tells us that there’s an terrible lot of COVID happening.”
“That is essentially the most important time we’ve handled COVID for the reason that winter surge, however in comparison with a yr in the past, we’re in higher form,” he stated.
Whereas the risk for most individuals has grow to be negligible, Swartzberg worries about these most in danger.
“The message that I’d prefer to get out to the general public is there’s an terrible lot of COVID circulating,” he stated. “When you’re at excessive threat, you could take precautions.”
That features getting vaccinated, should you haven’t had a shot not too long ago.
That tracks with what Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco professor of medication who makes a speciality of infectious ailments, has seen at his hospital not too long ago.
“The info has been constant for the final yr or so. The individuals within the hospital, usually, are older than 75 or very immune compromised,” he stated.
And so they have one thing else in widespread: “No one that I’ve seen received the vaccine because it got here out within the fall.”
A healthcare employee locations resolution droplets right into a speedy antigen Covid-19 take a look at at a Reliant Well being Companies testing web site in Hawthorne, California on January 18, 2022. (Picture by Patrick T. FALLON / AFP) (Picture by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP through Getty Photographs)
A newly formulated vaccine was launched final fall, and people at excessive threat can and will get a booster in between the brand new annual photographs, Swartzberg stated. It’s not too late to get boosted this summer season, if you’re excessive threat, and you’ll nonetheless be eligible for a brand new shot within the fall.
The now annual re-formulation of the COVID vaccine is anticipated in August or September, and it is going to be based mostly on one of many newer FLiRT variants, after some forwards and backwards between FDA and its vaccine advisory committee.
Whereas those that are at excessive threat may select to take precautions throughout this summer season’s surge, there are some reassuring metrics that present COVID now’s a distinct beast than COVID through the early days of the pandemic in 2020.
“If we had seen this quantity of COVID wastewater in 2020, our hospitals can be bursting on the seams,” stated Chin-Hong. “The truth that we’re seeing a lot within the wastewater and only a modest improve in hospitalizations is because of the truth that the inhabitants, basically, is way more immune than in earlier years.”
And whereas deaths have elevated barely prior to now a number of weeks, COVID is chargeable for solely about 1% of deaths in California as of late June, the newest obtainable knowledge. That’s nonetheless a lot decrease than the three.5% in January of this yr through the winter surge and manner beneath January 2021, the primary winter surge, when 40% of all deaths in California have been because of COVID.
Earlier than this summer season surge, the p.c of deaths because of COVID had reached new lows, staying effectively below 1% since March of this yr, the bottom it has been constantly for the reason that begin of the pandemic.
“I believe the factor that persons are lacking proper now’s that it’s simple to get COVID,” stated Swartzberg, who has began eating exterior and utilizing masks indoors extra usually. “It’s virtually an ideal storm of extremely transmissible variants, a inhabitants that isn’t taking precautions and waning immunity.”