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COVID has reached its second-highest U.S. peak of the pandemic, according to federal wastewater data released Friday—this as related ER visits, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to rise.
National COVID wastewater levels sat at 12.85—the number of standard deviations above baseline—on Dec. 30, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Until then, the pandemic’s second-highest peak had occurred on Dec. 31, 2022, during the XBB.1.5 “Kraken” surge, when that level sat at 10.16.
The pandemic’s all-time high still looms further upward—at 23.34 on Jan. 8, 2022, the peak of the first Omicron wave.
With COVID testing at all-time lows, wastewater is now the best and quickest way to gauge the growth of the virus, experts say. Other indicators, like hospitalizations and deaths, only reflect the most severe cases and lag by several weeks.
Courtesy of Biobot Analytics
This winter’s surge—fueled by the highly mutated and now globally dominant variant JN.1, which some say represents a new era of the pandemic—has yet to peak. It likely will in a week or two, according to Jay Weiland, a variant forecaster with a reputation for high accuracy and veritably the only left in the business, at this late date.
Unfortunately, Biobot will not be providing an update this week due to holiday break. The CDC wastewater data from last Friday suggests:
????1,40,000 new infections/day
????1 in every 240 became infected today
????1 in every 24 people currently infected https://t.co/j09q3urs8b— JWeiland (@JPWeiland) January 2, 2024
COVID hospitalizations, too, are on the rise, up more than 20% week over week, according to the CDC data. Both COVID-related ER visits and deaths are up by roughly 13% as well.
Globally, JN.1 accounts for more than 40% of COVID sequences reported worldwide, according to outbreak.info, a collaborative effort supported by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The variant began picking up steam globally last fall, and its growth became near linear last month.
“This is what happens with an Omicron-like event of a new, hyper-mutated strain … that picks up a critical added mutation, … giving it huge growth advantage and fast rise to global dominance,” Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and a leading authority on the virus, said via Twitter on Friday.
The JN.1 variant is completing its takeover in the United States, pegged at 62% of new cases in today’s @CDCgov update (which is about 2 weeks behind actual d/t sequencing lag). It’s also globally dominant.https://t.co/jjl2AnOYb5 pic.twitter.com/ATvp8ufP7M
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 5, 2024
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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