Outbreak Outlook - National - June 16

Updates on the new covid variant, and a big recall of brown eggs

Respiratory Diseases

Influenza-like illness

Flu is quiet. Enjoy the summer break.

Influenza-like illness (ILI) activity continues to be minimal or low in every state. After several weeks of low but stable outpatient ILI, there was a further decline this past week to 1.7%. (As a reminder, outpatient ILI is the percentage of visits to the doctor that are for fever and cough or sore throat.) All regions of the country look good, but the Midwest is particularly low.

Severe illness is also very low: hospitalizations held steady at 0.4 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.

The decrease in outpatient visits was primarily concentrated among the two youngest age groups, those aged 0-4 and 5-24 years old. For kids aged 0-4, outpatient ILI visits declined from 6.2 to 5.4%. For people 5-24 years old, outpatient ILI visit went from 2.7% to 2.2%. While these are small changes, these are the largest decreases that has been reported for either group for the past couple months. Rates for all other age groups have slipped under 1.4%.

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COVID-19

Another week of a quiet, with a few spots of increasing activity. Nationally, wastewater activity decreased to very low levels. Emergency department visits held steady at a very low 0.3%, and hospitalizations held steady at 1.1 hospitalizations per 100,000 people. However, the variant I have been watching is beginning to tick up. More on that below.