California's summer wave could top
winter surge:
The concentration of coronavirus levels in San Francisco’s wastewater is at even higher levels than during the winter, according to data tweeted by Marlene Wolfe, an assistant professor in environmental health at Emory University.
Wastewater data for much of L.A. County — Los Angeles city and a wide swath of eastern and southern L.A. County — have been unavailable due to a supply chain shortage on testing supplies at the state level. But county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said last week that steady increases have been noted as of late in the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District that serves areas in and around Calabasas and the L.A. County Sanitation Districts’ treatment plant in Lancaster.
The wastewater data suggest many infections aren’t being recorded in officially reported coronavirus case counts. That is because so many people are using at-home over-the-counter tests, which can be more convenient than getting tested at a medical facility, where results are reported to the government.
I'm glad we have people monitoring the wastewater as we continue to dismantle testing.
At UC San Francisco’s hospitals, 5.7% of asymptomatic patients are testing positive for the coronavirus, meaning 1 in 18 people who feel fine nonetheless have the coronavirus. In other words, in a group of 100 people, there’s a 99.7% chance that someone there has the coronavirus and is potentially contagious. “Think about that the next time you go into a crowded bar or get onto an airplane with 100 people,” Wachter said.
“I kind of wish the flight attendants would hold up a sign that says, ‘I can guarantee to you that someone on this plane has COVID,’” he said. “I think the rate of mask wearing would go up quite a bit.
The data:
L.A. County’s coronavirus case rate continues to rise. L.A. County is now averaging about 6,900 coronavirus cases a day — nearly double the peak case rate from last summer’s Delta surge, and 27% higher than the previous week. On a per capita basis, L.A. County’s case rate is 476 cases a week for every 100,000 residents; a rate of 100 or more is considered high. COVID-19 deaths in L.A. County have risen from 50 per week to between 88 to 100 fatalities per week over the past month.
California is recording about 21,000 coronavirus cases a day, up 16% over the prior week. On a per capita basis, the state is recording 368 cases a week for every 100,000 residents. California is recording roughly 255 COVID-19 deaths per week. Weekly deaths in the state have fluctuated from 200 to 300 deaths a week.
And this is totally the message being broadcast to everyone right now:
“The symptoms are quite devious in my mind,” Kosnik said, with some people who don’t know they are infected thinking symptoms are only from allergies or a cold.
“If you have symptoms, and you test negative, you need to still assume you could have COVID,” Wachter said.
Why the concern?
Regarding BA.5, “what is different — and this is where it is something of a game-changer — is the level of immune escape, and particularly to the degree to which immunity from prior infection, including prior versions of Omicron, doesn’t seem to count for as much,” Wachter said.
So it’s wrong to think that if you’ve survived a coronavirus infection, you no longer have to worry about COVID-19 for perhaps three months, Wachter said.
“We are seeing reinfections as early as a month after a prior infection,” Wachter said. “You can’t count on COVID ‘superpowers’ from your prior infection-plus-vaccination to make you completely free of risk for the next three or four months, which is really the way we used to think about this a few months ago.”
