2024-08-18 21:10:16
Washington: The Covid pandemic has once again started showing its colours in the US. The highest number of Covid patients have been traced in the country in the last two years. This has been confirmed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Wastewater Dashboard itself. It has reported that a big wave of Covid-19 is going on in the US. This has been revealed by the wastewater (sewage water) coming out of people’s homes. This has happened due to the viral activity in wastewater reaching the highest level in the last two years. The CDC has reported that the measure of viral activity in wastewater has increased to 8.82 on August 10, which is slightly less than the peak of 9.56 in July 2022. Currently, sewage water is the only way the US has to detect the level of Covid virus.
Viral activity increased 8 times since May
The CDC says the most recent data is incomplete and may change. It was at 1.36 in the US in May before Covid surged again. “Currently, Covid-19 wastewater viral activity levels remain very high nationally, with the western US region leading the way,” Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s wastewater surveillance program, said in an email. He also said, “This year’s Covid-19 wave is arriving earlier than last year, which appeared in late August or early September in 2022.”
Patients being admitted to the ICU
According to the CDC’s Covid dashboard, the rate of patients being admitted to the ICU and dying from Covid-19 is also increasing continuously. However, it has not yet reached a worrying level. By the end of July, the CDC dashboard shows that about 4 Covid patients per 1 lakh people in a region are getting hospitalized after getting infected. This is four times the figure of about one Covid patient per 1 lakh getting hospitalized in May this year. However, there are also a large number of infected people who are recovering with treatment at home.
Scientists expressed concern
Dr. Marlene Wolfe, assistant professor of environmental health and public health at Emory University and program director of WastewaterSCAN, said, “This is a very significant jump. The levels are very high. They are the highest levels we have ever seen during the summer wave. We are detecting SARS-CoV-2 in 100 percent of our samples across the country right now.” WastewaterSCAN also began monitoring in early 2022 and the number of sites it monitors has changed over time.
America is monitoring through sewage water
The US Department of Health no longer tracks COVID-19 cases like it did during the pandemic. It relies heavily on wastewater levels to determine daily or weekly new infections in the US. The rise in cases is due to waning antibodies in the population and three new variants of COVID-19. These variants have diverged so much from the parent virus JN.1 that our antibodies are unable to neutralize them quickly.