If it seems like a lot of people are getting COVID right now, you’re not imagining it. We’re in the middle of a worldwide summer COVID-19 wave. A high or very high level of COVID-19 virus is being detected in wastewater in almost every state, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least 10 other states have a high amount of COVID in the wastewater. “We’re now relying on wastewater data, because people aren’t testing. We can’t have other reliable measures,” said Dr.
Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University and former White House COVID-19 response coordinator in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition . He said that based on the wastewater data, “this is turning out to be possibly the biggest summer wave we’ve had.” Jha said we’ve settled into what feels like a more familiar pattern with COVID.
Recently, the CDC labeled COVID as being endemic, meaning that COVID is here to stay in predictable ways. There are two waves a year: one during summer and another during winter. The summer wave tends to be a little smaller, while the winter wave is bigger.
But unlike the flu, which has a wave in the winter and almost no cases after, COVID infections can rise in between waves. “It’s looking like this is probably not a seasonal virus, so it will likely be year round,” said Dr. Otto Yang, associate chief of infectious diseases and UCLA and professor of medicine in an interview with Morning Edition.
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