Is this the biggest Covid summer wave ever?

The USA is in what could potentially be its largest surge in terms of number of daily cases of the Covid virus during the current summer season and there is as yet no sign of the situation letting up. 
 
“If you just look at infections, this is most likely going to be becoming the largest summer wave that we could have had, ” Dr Ashish Jha a specialist in the School of Public Health at Brown University and a previous COVID-19 response coordinator for the White House. “It has not attained the status of the winter waves, but it is growing closer to the measurement. ” 
 
I would like to especially point out that in the past week, infections have increased not only in the United States, but around the world, WHO expert Dr. Maria van Kerkhove said during the briefing this week. The current rate of positive cases in Europe on the tests is over 20 % Van Kerkhove stated adding that from the wastewater collected and analyzed, the real situation could be two to twenty times worse than reported. 
 
Here’s the best way to gauge how much virus the U. S. is handling, which is through the CDC’s wastewater data because, increasingly, many people just get tested at home when they get sick or not at all. 
 
On the CDC tracker, levels of Covid are categorised as high, and the western part of the US including Texas and California is among the most affected. Some of the eastern states like Florida and North Carolina are also observing extremely high amounts of viral transmission in the population. 
 
Symptoms can’t determine how many cases a day there are; virus seroquel levels are much higher in the country than they were at this time last year. 
 
The summer wave this year also started earlier than the one last year, Jha also pointed out. The numbering of cases begun in June and not in July or August 2023. 
 
Jha believes this wave will plateau in the next few weeks, and cases will decline by a significant amount from what they will be by September when the new vaccines that target the KP are released. 2 strain which is a lineal descendant of the JN. It should be one variant only if that is the intention. 
 
The new vaccines should be released or approve by Food and Drug Administration in the forthcoming weeks. At that time, the CDC will further advise which population should take the vaccine first. 
 
Jha said that before the potential winter COVID-19 wave, it is recommended to get vaccinated in October, but any time before Thanksgiving is acceptable. 
 
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health virologist Andrew Pekosz didn’t anticipate the summer waves to be this severe four years into Covid. 
 
‘I, and many other virologists, thought that we probably would see summer waves for maybe another one or two years, but we didn’t expect them to increase,’ he said. “They had seemed to have assumed that the numbers would gradually decline as time went by, as we step into what we expect would be having one wave of covid cases in winter per annum. ” 
 
The latest CDC forecast has a combination of variants now circulating in the United States including, KP. 3, KP. 3. 1. 1 and KP. 2. 3a, members of the descendants of the JN. It lets out one version of the virus present in circulation at the beginning of this year. Some of the scientists call the variants FLiRT for the changes of the genes and it is thought that these are some of the most transmissible. 
 
The causes of current surge are possibly the Delta variant and increased time spent indoors because of heat, he said. 
 
“Apart from that, there is not much that we can probably point to our finger and say that this is what is causing this summer surge,” Pekosz said. 
 
Speaking of hospitalizations, for the most part, they are less this year comparing to the last year regarding the number of Covid cases. These recorded levels have been slightly higher in some of the recent summer months than they are presently, but not significantly so. Luckily, deaths because of Covid are still as few as they have never been before. 
 
“We’re seeing people that are getting admitted and test positive for Covid, but the severe pulmonary complications of Covid-19 are extremely rare,” said Dr. Michael Phillips, Chief Hospital Epidemiologist, NYU Langone Health New York. “Where we are seeing a far more substantial uptick, truthfully, is in folks that come into our emergency department or individuals attaining the hospital to get evaluated and are positive and go home. ” 
 
The prevalence testing positivity rate for patients with symptoms of Covid at NYU Langone Health is 12%, which has even tripled over the recent couple of months only. 
 
Last month it had 1,357 positive tests, over twice as many as in July 2023 – the facility reported 562 cases that month. Out of all the Covid patients the month before last, only 12 were admitted for Covid purposes. 
 
“He managed to say, ‘Our hospitalization rates are down so even if we are testing and seeing more [Covid], it appears to be affecting our susceptible populations less,’ ” Phillips said. 
 
Jha commented that it is unknown what will occur this winter, but that there might be a silver lining when it comes to massive numbers of infections during the summer months. 
 
Mr. Gupta said: “A big summer wave often results in a somewhat smaller winter wave and vice versa – largely, given the fact there is a bit more immunity within the population. ”