For a lot of the summer, COVID levels were high in California and the Bay Area.
According to a Friday update from the California Department of Public Health, the test positivity rate rose to 14.3%, up greater than two percentage points from the previous week. That's the best positivity rate in a 12 months.
After a three-month increase, the positivity rate is rapidly approaching the record high for a summer surge – 16% in July 2022.
While test data is not any longer available on the local level, Wastewater shows that the virus has been spreading on a big scale for several weeksAll 4 wastewater basins – Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Gilroy – have “high” concentrations.
High concentrations of the virus are also present in wastewater in Contra Costa County. The county health department urged residents this week to wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces“especially for those who are at high risk of severe illness if infected.”
“Face masks are an effective way to help contain the spread of the virus,” Dr. Ori Tzvieli, Contra Costa County's health officer, said in an announcement. “This is one of those moments. Our health care system is not currently seriously impacted by COVID, and our goal is to keep it that way.”
Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley, considers Contra Costa Health’s advice to be “excellent advice.”
“There are still too many people being hospitalized and too many people dying,” Swartzberg said, noting that the annual variety of COVID deaths still exceeds the variety of deaths during a standard flu season.
Contra Costa Health attributes the present, sustained increase to the FLiRT variants, that are currently spreading within the west of the country and are described as “particularly contagious.”
“We didn't have a long break from the winter wave,” Swartzberg said. He also attributes the persistent rise of the virus this spring and summer to the present series of variants. “The Omicron subvariants continue to create new subvariants that are more transmissible and immunocompromising.”
Originally published:
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