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A new swell in COVID-19 cases is happening along the Peninsula, according to testing of wastewater in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
“We’ve been monitoring our wastewater quite religiously. We were having a bit of a wave in July, which looks like the beginning of a drift up,” Dr. Sara Cody, ​Santa Clara County public health officer, said.
The Stanford Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network (SCAN) tests sewage sludge for segments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19 cases. The data shows that July concentrations were close to May levels, the previous spike in local sewersheds.
The XBB strains are prominent right now, and all are descendants of the highly transmissible omicron variant. About 98% of the county’s population can be accounted for through wastewater surveillance, and higher levels indicate more infection is spreading in the community, Cody said.
“We’ve had this data for several years now … (and) it bounces around quite a lot. I would say the good news is we’re nowhere near where we were last year at this time,” she said. But now, “we’re having an increase in transmission.”
Whether that trend foreshadows additional spikes remains to be seen. Recent data shows that most of the watersheds have been dipping or leveling out recently after new peaks in late June and early to mid-July. With people traveling and having large gatherings – often without masks – the trajectory could change again.
Statewide and nationally, the number of cases and concentrations in wastewater are going up. The rate of COVID-19-related hospitalizations rose to 12.1% nationally between July 16 and July 22, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Locally, samples from the San Jose-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility show the trend is continuing to go up as of July 31 and is the highest in the past six weeks. The concentration is a little more than half the rate of late March, which was within the winter-early spring peak, the SCAN data show.
At the Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant, the concentration of virus in late July was more than five times the amount that was present on May 31, when concentrations from the previous spike had finally, significantly declined. As of July 31, the concentration seems to have gone down, at about only one-third the amount of virus as earlier in the month, the SCAN data dashboard shows.
CODIGA, an offshoot of the Palo Alto data that looks at viral concentrations at Stanford, showed a similar concentration to Palo Alto’s around the July 4 weekend. While the concentration dropped significantly by the following week, since about mid-July it has been creeping upward.
Silicon Valley Clean Water, which treats sewage at a plant in Redwood City, showed concentrations in mid-July were almost 10 times higher than in early June. The concentration halved in the last two weeks of July, indicating a possible downward trajectory, ​​the data shows.
Lastly, the City of Sunnyvale Water Pollution Control Plant virus concentrations spiked around July 17, about six-and-a-half times its lowest number, which was just prior to the July 4 holiday. As of July 31, it had leveled off to about half of the month’s peak.
Cases are up, but what about hospitalizations?
Cody said the other question is whether the numbers are translating to hospitalization.
“Because that’s when we really worry, and it may be going up slightly, but it’s nowhere near where it was this time last year,” she said. “And when we look at the seven-day average of new COVID-confirmed patients that get admitted to hospitals in the county, that does look like it is increasing. We don’t have that data for last year this time. So it’s hard to tell you what the trends are.”
There’s good news, but it’s mixed with more cautious news.
“COVID-19-confirmed patients in the ICU remain low. The number of all patients including those in the ICU is just a slight uptick, but it is not as pronounced as it was last year. But the overall number of patients coming in for admissions to all hospitals who are COVID positive is increasing,” she said.
Cody said she anticipates there will likely be more COVID-19 cases this fall. It’s been the general pattern, although COVID-9 hasn’t really fallen into a completely clear seasonal pattern.
“There are summer bumps and sometimes even a spring bump, but you know, COVID will continue to reveal itself to us. I can’t imagine that we’re going to have a fall/winter without a bump. If you look at the wastewater … and then you look at the hospitalizations, you can see that even when COVID transmission is higher, it’s not translating to hospitalization and death the way it did in the pandemic.
“Pretty much everyone has some kind of immunity either from vaccinations or infection or both. So it’s really not the same impact, and I suspect that trend will continue,” she said.
People can still be pretty sick though. The 14-day average for COVID-19 hospitalizations in Santa Clara County was 80.7 patients as of July 22 and about 15 for San Mateo County, according to the California state COVID-19 dashboard.
And then there’s long-COVID, which can cause a constellation of debilitating conditions that can last for months or years, health authorities say.
In some ways, the messages to the public in dealing with COVID-19 are not new, but whether the public has the appetite to follow them remains an open question, Cody said.
“We want everyone to stay up to date on their vaccinations. Get the new formulations in this new COVID vaccine when it comes out this fall. It’ll be recommended for everyone six months and up. And we continue to recommend indoor masking, particularly when it’s crowded or the ventilation is poor. That really works,” she said.
Dr. Sara Cody with her hysterical overreaction to Covid is a menace to society. She should have been fired long ago.
The article would have been more informative if actual case numbers were discussed instead of just yada-yada.