CDC and Covid
As taken from the Comments Section., Commenter RJS . . .
the CDC reports that the trend in hospital admissions for Covid was up 12.1% to 8,035 over the most recent week, while the trend in the percentage of Covid deaths was again unchanged…if we go back three weeks on the CDC’s Covid deaths graph to the death totals which presumably won’t be revised, we find there were 426 Covid deaths over the week ending July 15th, which would have been a pandemic low, down from 437 during the week to July 8th…the EIA also has an interactive map headed Percentage of Provisional Deaths Due to COVID-19 in the Past Week, by State/Territory which displays data thru July 29th, which shows Covid accounted for 0.7% of New York’s deaths, down 22.2% from the prior week (which was obviosuly 0.9%) but also shows Covid accounted for 2% of California’s deaths, up 81.8% from the prior week, when Covid accounted for 1.1% of California’s deaths…
Biobot’s graphics show that Covid’s concentration in samples of wastewater continues to rise almost everywhere..it’s still highest in the South, with 400 copies of the virus per ml of wastewater as of August 2nd, but that’s only 1.5% higher week over week….the concentration in the Northeast is now at 397 copies per ml, a 7.3% increase, the concentration in the West is at 351 copies per ml, a 16.6% increase, and the concentration in the Midwest is at 312 copies per ml, a 41.8% increase, so everyone is catching up…nationally, the concentration of Covid in our sewers is now 226% of what it was six weeks ago…
the CDC has updated it’s variant proportions page this week, and we have a new leading strain, EG 5, at 17.3% of the virus samples sequenced, up from 11.9% two weeks ago….XBB.1.16 is now second most common, at 15,6%, down from 17.2% last report, and XBB.2.3 is third at 11.2%, which is unchanged….XBB.1.15, which the new vaccines are designed to target, is now at 10.3% of the virus samples sequenced, down from 15.4% in the prior update….FL1.5.1 is the only other variant that’s obviously rising, now at 6.8%, up from 3.9% last report…i believe that, and EG 5, are both sublineages of XBB.1.19.1, but i have no idea why they weren’t also named XBB, as the 20 or so other circulating permutations of that recombinant Omicron are (maybe if Joel sees this he can enlighten us all on how these variants are named)…i found a mention of FL1.5.1 on “Your Local Epidemiologist” blog from mid-July, wherein it is said to be “showing its teeth by exponentially increasing quickly in the Dominican Republic”...
US Has New Dominant COVID Variant Called EG.5, medscape.com, Lisa O’Mary
“As the virus circulates and spreads, it accumulates mutations that are used to name new virus sequences so that researchers, health care providers, and public health authorities have a common language to describe genetic sequence mutations. SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences are identified and named using the Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak (PANGO)External Link Disclaim
nomenclature referred to as the PANGO lineage. PANGO lineage names use a series of unique letter and number combinations, for example BA.2 and BA.2.12.1. The World Health Organization (WHO)External Link Disclaimer assigns names to key SARS-CoV-2 variants using the Greek alphabet, such as delta and omicron. Several related PANGO lineages may be included in a single WHO named variant. For example, the omicron variant includes the BA.1.1, BA.2, BA.3, BA.4, and BA.5 lineages, as well as others.”
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/sars-cov-2-viral-mutations-impact-covid-19-tests#:~:text=The%20World%20Health%20Organization%20(WHO,omicron%20variant%20includes%20the%20BA.