If you thought COVID was a thing of the past, reassess as case numbers rise this summer. The entire Bay Area appears to be catching the virus at once.
Local data shows the virus is spreading rapidly in San Jose and most communities within the Bay Area and California. But despite near-record high levels of COVID in wastewater and rising positivity rates, other metrics show much has modified, confirming the virus shouldn’t be nearly as deadly because it once was before vaccines and coverings became widely available.
Wastewater data for San Jose shows the virus in the town's sewers reached a near-record level this week, lower than a tenth of a percent below the previous record set in the course of the first omicron surge in January 2022. Santa Clara County's three other sewers – Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Gilroy – have also had high COVID levels because the first days of July.
COVID levels are also rising within the East Bay as more people contract the virus. Public health officials in Alameda County said this week that sewage was showing a spike within the virus and urged people to take precautions.
Statewide, the COVID positivity rate, or the share of COVID tests that come back positive, began to spike in June. On June 1, the positivity rate was 4.1%. By July 1, it had greater than doubled to 10.6%, in keeping with data released Friday. The state is now lower than a percentage point below where it was in the course of the COVID surge this winter, when it reached just over 11%.
The wastewater data shows what doctors and medical professionals see each day.
“We're clearly seeing a surge in cases now,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. “We're seeing a sharp increase in positive tests, a sharp increase in emergency room visits, a sharp increase in hospitalizations. All of that tells us there are a lot of cases of COVID.”
“This is the most intense time we have been dealing with COVID since the winter wave, but we are in better shape compared to last year,” he said.
While the threat has turn out to be negligible for most individuals, Swartzberg worries about those that are most in danger.
“The message I want to get across to the public is that there is a lot of COVID going around,” he said. “If you are at high risk, you need to take precautions.”
This includes getting vaccinated if you will have not received one recently.
This is consistent with observations recently made at Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a medical professor specializing in infectious diseases at UC San Francisco, at his hospital.
“The data has been consistent for about a year. The people in hospital are generally older than 75 or have very weakened immune systems,” he said.
And they’ve something else in common: “No one I have seen has received the vaccine since it came out in the fall.”
A brand new vaccine was released last fall, and high-risk individuals can and may get a booster shot between latest annual vaccinations, Swartzberg said. If you're within the high-risk groups, it's not too late to get a booster this summer, and also you'll still be eligible for a brand new shot in the autumn.
The now annual reformulation of the COVID vaccine is predicted in August or September and, after some backwards and forwards between the FDA and its vaccine advisory committee, can be based on considered one of the newer FLiRT variants.
While those at high risk could also be taking precautions during this summer's surge, there are some reassuring numbers that show COVID is a special beast now than it was within the early days of the pandemic in 2020.
And while deaths have increased barely in recent weeks, COVID has accounted for under about 1% of California deaths since late June, essentially the most recent data available. That's still much lower than the three.5% in January of this yr in the course of the winter wave, and much lower than January 2021, the primary winter wave, when 40% of all California deaths were on account of COVID.
Before this summer surge, the proportion of deaths on account of Covid had reached a brand new low, remaining well below one percent since March of this yr, the bottom consistent figure because the pandemic began.
“I think what people don't understand right now is that you can easily catch COVID,” said Swartzberg, who has began eating outdoors and wearing masks more often indoors. “It's almost a perfect storm of incredibly contagious variants, a population that's not taking precautions and waning immunity.”
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