Augie RayApr 22, 2023

🧵 on the US #COVID19 outlook:

The coming months are likely to see another surge of infections and risks of Long COVID. Only 17% of the US had received a bivalent booster. If this includes you, now's a great time to fix that oversight. (A new study shows that with new variants, the viral load of infected people is reduced with a booster but isn't with the original vaccination series. Your choice to avoid a booster could become someone else's problem in the months ahead.) https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Show threadAugie RayApr 22, 2023

What's happening now?

We are seeing the growth of new, more immune-evasive variants. The XBB.1.5 variant became predominant in the US just three months ago, but its share of cases is declining at an accelerating pace. Within two or three weeks, it will no longer be predominant. In its place are a couple of new variants.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
janetcnyApr 22, 2023
Show threadAugie Ray
One growing variant is XBB.1.16. If you read my updates, you've been hearing about this for the past month as it has caused a significant surge in infections in India. Nicknamed “Arcturus,” this variant was just declared by WHO to be a Variant of Interest (the current highest category of concern). According to the US CDC Nowcast, this variant has grown from 1% to 10% of cases in the past month. It is doubling every 9 days.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/04/14/covid-variant-arcturus-india-explained/
What to know about Arcturus, a new coronavirus subvariant the WHO is tracking

India has returned to mask mandates in some areas after rising coronavirus cases linked to a new variant called Arcturus, or XBB.1.16.

The Washington Post
Apr 22, 2023 at 9:39amWeb
Show threadAugie RayApr 22, 2023

Another variant is also accelerating in the US: XBB.1.9.1. This variant has grown from 3% to 8% of cases in the last month, so its growth rate is smaller than Arcturus. Between the two, the US COVID situation will change in the next month.

COVID is out of the headlines, and it can seem almost everyone is back to normal. Case counts are darn near the lowest of the pandemic--but this is deceiving because testing rates are the lowest they've been since the first few weeks of the pandemic.

Show threadAugie RayApr 22, 2023

The positive rate of testing has declined in 2023, but it remains 2-3x higher than the lowest points of 2021 and 2022. And, there is evidence in the CDC's wastewater surveillance that COVID has stopped declining and may be about to rise.

All of which is to say that COVID is not gone, and risks of acute and chronic illness seem likely to grow this spring. In fact, the average infection rate on the trustworthy website COVIDActNow.org is above 1.0 in most US states. https://covidactnow.org/

U.S. COVID Risk & Vaccine Tracker

Covid Act Now has real-time tracking of your community's COVID risk level. Explore how your community is doing.

Covid Act Now
Show threadAugie RayApr 22, 2023
You don't need to stay home. Just use some caution. Please consider masks in crowds. And remember that any infections you get, you can give to those you love. We still don't know the long-term risks of repeated infections, but the early studies are not encouraging, so don't volunteer to be a test subject in our population-wide COVID experiment. Be one of the control group who finds out years from now how smart you were to avoid COVID in 2023.
Show threadKevin Karhan Apr 22, 2023

@augieray *nodds in agreement*

I'll just #KeepMasksOn cuz #CovidIsNotOver!

Show threadTodd EdwardsonApr 22, 2023
@augieray this is honestly a big motivation for me: being one of the people who never caught covid.
Show threadManaApr 22, 2023
@augieray my doctor says that the rapid tests are showing up negative but PCR tests positive. I also know three families down with COVID now, including a 10 year old who had to be rushed to the ER for his 2nd bout with it. #StillCovidCareful
Show threadJessica JonikasApr 22, 2023
@augieray Is there a reliable source for monitoring wastewater testing? COVID cautious people I know are looking at declining reported transmission rates as a sign that it’s finally time to unmask in indoor public spaces. But, as you note, it’s also true that COVID testing is at a very low point, so these data aren’t fully reliable. I know people who no longer test at all when sick (let alone report it anywhere even if they did).
Show threadAugie RayApr 22, 2023

@jajonikas The US CDC has a good wastewater surveillance chart on their COVID website. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance

Biobot is good, too, but it is updated less frequently and doesn't seem to include as complete a survey of surveillance sites. https://biobot.io/data/

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Show threadJessica JonikasApr 23, 2023
@augieray Great, thank you very much!
Show threadCatchingmybreathApr 22, 2023
@augieray it just never ends 🤦🏼‍♀️ and our hospitals will lose mask mandates. We have staff whose kids have been infected 4x; always sick. Quite sad but families don’t seem to get the connection how bad this is 🤷‍♀️ .. we don’t get sick days in dentistry. Our industry is already short staffed. Not going to end well