Yet another summer COVID-19 wave may have started in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“After roughly six, seven months of steady declines, things are starting to tick back up again,” Dr. Brendan Jackson, the CDC’s COVID-19 incident manager, tells NPR.
The amount of coronavirus being detected in wastewater, the percentage of people testing positive for the virus and the number of people seeking care for COVID-19 at emergency rooms all started increasing in early July, Jackson says.
“We’ve seen the early indicators go up for the past several weeks, and just this week for the first time in a long time we’ve seen hospitalizations tick up as well,” Jackson says. “This could be the start of a late summer wave.”
Hospitalizations jumped 10% to 7,109 for the week ending July 15, from 6,444 the previous week, according to the latest CDC data.
The increases vary around the country, with the virus appearing to be spreading the most in the southeast and the least in the Midwest, Jackson says.