Outbreak Outlook - Aug 5

Summer Covid-19 wave drags on.

Summer Plans: During the summer months, I am on my off-season schedule:

• For paid subscribers, I’ll combine weekly updates into a single report. These updates are less detailed compared to my winter report.

• Free subscribers will continue to receive occasional essays and posts during the summer months, but I won’t be posting as often.

• In the fall, I will return to sending out a full-length, free national version of Outbreak Outlook. Paid subscribers will receive region-specific editions with more local data.

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ILI

Influenza activity remains minimal, with 1.5% of all outpatient visits nationally due to influenza-like illness. Hospitalizations remain near-zero at 0.1 hospitalizations per 100,000 individuals. As we near the fall, this will start to change, but I am enjoying the break while it lasts. 

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COVID-19

The summer wave continues. Wastewater activity is high nationally and increased again this past week; it is at levels last seen in January of this year.

Wastewater concentration of SARS-CoV-2. Source: CDC

Emergency department visits have also increased yet again this past week and now account for 2.2% of all ED visits. This is close to the 2.5% peak of last summer’s wave. Most of the country reported moderate (+10-19%) or substantial (>20%) increases in ED visits this past week.

While hospitalizations declined slightly this past week to 2.8 hospitalizations per 100,000 population, this has limited usefulness as a proxy for severity nationwide, given that we are only receiving hospitalization data from a small number of states and the Covid-19 picture is quite different from state-to-state at the moment.