Covid cases are climbing again this summer.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s forecasting model estimates that infections are growing, or likely growing, in most states.
While the agency is reporting low levels of the virus in wastewater nationally, some states, including Texas, Utah and Nevada, are showing very high concentrations of Covid in their wastewater. Emergency department visits linked to Covid are rising, too.
Researchers have braced for an uptick. Though the virus is largely unpredictable — variants shape-shift and symptoms can change from one infection to the next — Covid cases have gone up every summer since the pandemic began.
Around this time last year, there were higher levels of Covid in wastewater than there are currently; this appears to be, so far, a milder wave.
As of June, when the C.D.C. last updated its variant tracker, the Covid variant NB.1.8.1. — nicknamed “Nimbus” — accounted for the most cases in the United States, around 43 percent.
The variant does not appear to make people sicker than other recent strains of the virus, but it does have a few additional mutations that might make it more transmissible and better at evading the immune system’s defenses, said Dr. Aubree Gordon, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Michigan.
The latest data suggests that while we’re not in a full-on surge, we are in a late summer upswing, said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Very clearly, the numbers are going up,” he said. “It’s here.”
The rest of the story gets into why COVID is up, and it’s a familiar litany of reasons – people are travelling and congregating in well-populated public spaces, and also spending more time indoors because it’s so bloody hot outside. Also, immunity wanes over time and it’s been awhile since the last booster. The next booster will be harder to get, so there will be more people susceptible to whatever the latest variant is as we go forward. Sure is a good thing that there haven’t been any nasty variants lately, because when there is we’re all gonna get it.
UPDATE: Also, too, the CDC is a disaster right now thanks to Trump and RFK Jr.