CNN – After a relatively slow start to the respiratory virus season, Covid-19 levels in the United States began ramping up just ahead of the winter holidays.
In previous years, Covid-19 levels have typically started to rise in early November and reach their seasonal peak by the end of December.
But this year, levels were nearly the lowest they’ve ever been through October and all of November, according to wastewater surveillance data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Trends started to shift in early December, though, with levels rising from low to high by the middle of the month.
In the week ending December 21, there was nearly three times as much Covid-19 circulating in the US than there was during the week ending December 7, CDC data shows.
“There have been more than 32,000 cases reported this year, according to preliminary data from mid-December.” – CNN [That’s about one case for every 10,000 Americans. – HEADLINE HEALTH]
This surge happened in all regions of the country, but there has been a particularly sharp uptick in the Midwest, where Covid-19 levels are nearly twice as high as they are in other parts of the country.
Some experts worry that the rapid rise after an unusually long lull could have left many people vulnerable to disease spread at the height of the holiday season.
In a social media post in mid-December, Dr. Michael Hoerger, a researcher at the Tulane University School of Medicine, called the latest wave of Covid-19 transmission a “’silent surge,’ coming on late out of nowhere.”
Hoerger runs a Covid-19 forecasting model that pulls heavily from the CDC wastewater surveillance data, and his estimates suggest that without any testing or isolation policies in place, there was a 1 in 8 chance of Covid-19 exposure at a gathering of 10 people on Christmas Day.
On a plane of more than 100 people, there was a 3 in 4 chance of exposure.
The rapid rise in cases corresponds with a newly dominant coronavirus variant called XEC …
