Every week, the State Department of Health updates the nationwide COVID dataand nearly every week this summer, the COVID positivity rate has increased. But this week, there are signs that the spread of the virus is slowing, because the positivity rate stagnated nationwide for the primary three weeks of August.
Wastewater data for Santa Clara County gives us one other indication that the worst of this summer's stubborn surge could also be over. Virus levels in San Jose are steadily declining. Gilroy recently slipped into the “medium” range, and Sunnyvale is firmly within the “medium” range.
As essentially the most current COVID metrics begin to indicate signs of a slowing increase, the true extent of this summer's surge is beginning to sink in. After COVID deaths hit record lows earlier this yr and the state recorded its first day with no COVID deaths since early 2020, the death toll began to rise again in July.
“The virus is so damn contagious,” said Errol Ozdalga, a clinical associate professor of drugs at Stanford. “It's a numbers game. There will be people who have bad [outcomes] But luckily it is much safer now than it was at the beginning.”
At the beginning of July, there were about seven COVID deaths per day in the Golden State, but by the end of the month that number had more than doubled to an average of 15 deaths per day.
Death data for August is largely incomplete because it can take several weeks for death certificates to be completed and processed, but the latest update shows that the percentage of all deaths due to Covid rose to over 3% in early August, comparable to the level at the peak of the Covid-19 wave this winter in December and January.
According to the CDC forecastsThe FLiRT subvariant KP.3.1.1 was liable for about 37% of recent COVID-19 cases within the United States this week.
John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley, is watching emerging variants and the evolution of COVID within the United Kingdom because they supply clues to what is perhaps happening here within the U.S. He says there was a steep decline in COVID positivity rates there in recent weeks.
California's ongoing surge is showing signs of abating just as the most recent COVID vaccine arrives in pharmacies across the state.
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