Covid News from the Week Ending October 26th

r.j. sigmund on Covid

US Covid metrics were again down sharply, but the CDC said it now expects to see a winter Covid peak higher than the summer peak, similar to Covid trends over the past 4 years. so we have that to look forward to. Among the CDC’s “early indicators” “test positivity”, or the percentage of tests for Covid that were positive, fell to 5.6% during the week ending October 19th, down from an upwardly revised 6.6% positive during the week ending October 12th, and down from an unrevised 7.6% during the week ending October 5th.

“Test positivity” was at 11.3% during the week ending September 21st, so it’s now less than half of what it was less than a month earlier. Meanwhile, Covid cases accounted for 0.6% of hospital emergency room patients during the week ending October 19th, down from an unrevised 0.7% of emergency patients during the week ending October 12th, and down from 0.8 of emergency patients during the week ending October 5th.

In hospital data that is two weeks older, the CDC reports that the US Covid hospitalization rate fell to 2.8 per 100,000 population during the week ending October 5th, down from an upwardly revised 3.3 per 100,000 during the week ending September 28th, and down from an upwardly revised 3.8 per 100,000 during the week ending September 21st. Hospitals will again be required to report Covid cases to the CDC starting in November, so we should be getting current, and more complete, hospital data soon.

The CDC also reported that Covid accounted for 1.4% of all US deaths during the week ending October 19th, down from a downwardly revised 1.5% Covid death rate reported for the week ending October 12th. and down from the 1.8% of deaths that were due to Covid for the week ending October 5th. However, five US states; Washington, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, still show Covid death rates greater than 2% of all deaths, Meanwhile, the CDC’s provisional Covid deaths graph, which lags current data by 3 weeks, shows there were 958 US deaths from Covid during the week ending  September 28th, down from the upwardly revised 1,042 Covid deaths during the week ending September 21st, and down from 1.203 Covid deaths during the week ending September 14th.

The CDC’s national reading for viral activity in wastewater continues to be LOW and falling, but not as rapidly as in weeks past. The national “viral activity level” fell to 1.94 for the week ending October 12th, down from an unrevised 2.27 for the week ending October 5th, also down from an up revised 2.80 for the week ending September 28th, and down from an upwardly revised 3.95 for the week ending September 21st.

The viral activity level in the Northeast. which had reportedly doubled last week, was revised sharply lower, and it now indicates a reading of 1.14 for the week ending October 19th, down from a downwardly revised 1.68 during the week ending October 12th (which had been reported at 2.59), and down from an upwardly revised 1.29 for the week ending October 5th (which had been reported at 1.23). Meanwhile,  the viral activity level in the West fell from an upwardly revised 2.92 for the week ending October 12th to  2.23 during the week ending October 19; the viral activity level in the Midwest rose from a downwardly revised 2.21 for the week ending October 12th to 2.22 for the week ending October 19th; and the viral activity level metric in the South fell from an upwardly revised 2.10 for the week ending October 12th to 1.90 for the week ending October 19th.

This was the week that the CDC reports on the proportions of Covid variants that are currently circulating, and it continues to indicate that the Omicron KP.3.1.1 variant dominant in the US, and that the  recombinant XEC variant continues to expand its presence…in addition, a “new” variant has made the list, by virtue of the LB.1 variant splitting into an LB.1 entry and one for its LB.1.3.1 offspring.

The KP.3.1.1 variant, which became the most common variant circulating 3 months ago, continued to account for 57% of the virus samples sequenced during the October 12th through October 26th period, unchanged from 57% of the national total during the September 29th through October 12th period, while up from a downwardly revised 50% of US Covid infections during the September 15th to September 28th, and up from 42% of the total during the two week period before that. The KP.3.1.1 variant is an offspring of KP.3 (see below) that has a mutation in the spike protein that enhances its transmissibility and immune evasion capabilities, which gives it an effective reproduction number (Rₑ) that’s significantly higher than its parent or that of any of the other variants currently circulating, except for the recently emerged XEC variant…like most every other variant currently circulating, KP.3.1.1 has the FLiRT mutations, characterized by replacements of phenylalanine (F) with leucine (L) at position 456 and arginine (R) with threonine (T) at position 346 on the virus’s spike protein, which eliminate binding sites for antibodies on that protein that would otherwise neutralize the Covid virus, which is why they became dominant and caused this summer’s wave of Covid infections. Since KP.3.1.1 is closely related to the KP.2 variant that the new vaccine was designed to target, the vaccine is expected to provide reasonable protection against it. It’s been reported that “early studies indicate that the updated vaccines are effective in reducing severe illness, hospitalization, and death caused by KP.3.1.1.” Notice that they don’t say you won’t contract KP.3.1.1 if you’re vaccinated, just that it will be less severe.