US President Joe Biden has declared the pandemic over in September 2022. However, a few weeks into 2024, global data shows a sharp rise in the number of infections.
Although vaccination programs have stabilized hospitalization numbers, experts have warned that authorities may be slow to respond to the grave dangers that lie ahead.
Lucky Tran, a science communicator at Columbia University, has recently sounded the alarm, saying that national and regional trends in the level of SARS-COV-2 virus activity in wastewater in the United States are rapidly increasing and could lead to 2023. He points out that it is finished.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), national measures Wastewater virus activity for the week ending December 30 was 12.85, compared to 5.45 for the previous month.
of metrics is based on the number of standard deviations above the baseline and is converted to a linear scale. The regions with the highest numbers were the Midwest and South, at 16.57 and 13.86, respectively.
The CDC believes that monitoring wastewater can detect the spread of the virus before clinical testing or before people become sick. It may also indicate asymptomatic infection. Nationwide, sewage virus activity levels for COVID-19 are in the “very high” range.
Tran said: “We are currently in the second-largest surge of the pandemic. Infections will peak next week, with up to 2 million new cases per day. During this surge, the highest total 100 million people (approximately 1 in 3 people in the U.S.) are likely to contract the coronavirus.”
He wasn’t the only one worried. The new data was one piece of evidence that alerted Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine and executive vice president of the nonprofit Scripps Research. LA Times Regarding the new coronavirus mutant strain JN.1.
“Based on wastewater levels, JN.1 is currently implicated in the second-largest infection wave of the pandemic in the United States after Omicron,” he said late last week. “The ability to track the true number of infected people is lost because most people test at home or don’t even test at all, but very high wastewater levels of the virus are spreading to about 2 million Americans every day. This indicates that you are infected.”
Topol warned that only 19% of eligible Americans have received the latest booster shot, and there remains a problem with immunity waning four to six months after vaccination.
“We continue to believe that the pandemic is over, that previous infections have turned the infection into a cold, and that life has returned to normal,” he said. “Unfortunately, none of this is true. The sheer number of infections in the current wave will undoubtedly result in more people suffering from long-term COVID-19 infections, especially the elderly, People who are immunocompromised or have comorbidities often get infected with the coronavirus.”It is far from a simple respiratory infection. ”
He went on to criticize Biden’s response to the rising numbers, the lack of support for nasal vaccines, and the lack of support from long-term coronavirus studies.according to white house statementThe US government has built a “robust emergency response infrastructure” to deal with further threats from the coronavirus.
In May 2023, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that while the novel coronavirus is an “ongoing pandemic” and an established health problem, it is no longer a public health emergency of international concern. He stated that the situation does not fall under PHEIC.
“While the global risk assessment remains high, this is mainly due to the high level of population-level immunity to infection, vaccination, or both, and “There is evidence that the risk to human health is reduced by consistent toxicity of the strains,” he said, “and improvements in clinical case management.”
“These factors have led to significant global declines in weekly deaths, hospitalizations, and intensive care unit admissions related to COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.SARS- CoV-2 continues to evolve, but currently circulating variants do not appear to be associated with increased severity.”
said Matthew Fox, a professor in the Boston University School of Epidemiology and Global Health. register While the evidence emerging from wastewater data is concerning, it remains to be seen how much vaccines and immunity built up through exposure to the virus can reduce hospitalizations.
“The data suggests a significant increase in the number of infections, and that is worrying,” he said. “However, given that so many people are testing at home, we don’t know much about the actual number of cases, so we can’t learn much about severity from things like sewage data, and we don’t need hospitalization data to do that. “We need it. We’ve seen it there as well. We’re seeing a surge in cases here in the U.S. and overseas, but nothing like what we were seeing before the vaccinations. There’s a lot of built-up immunity. Vaccines are still working against these new variants, so so far we’re OK, although not as well as before.”The concern is that the variants that are better at escaping immunity are This is where you can recognize early on that there is a need for a good monitoring system. ”
In December, the World Health Organization elevated the Omicron variant JN.1 to the status of “variant of concern,” following the “variants of concern” given to Omicron, Delta, and Alpha at their peak. Ta. That decision was based in part on wastewater data.
The U.S. is not alone in recording evidence of increased coronavirus infections in wastewater. In the Netherlands, the number of hospitalized patients increased sharply in mid-December, even as anti-virus measures went into full swing. waste water rose The number of virus particles per 100,000 residents in one week was 4,438, a 57% increase. That number had fallen to 2,966 by the end of the month, but was still well above the 57 reported in July.
Harald Wischgel, a spokesperson for the public health institute RIVM, said in an interview with a Dutch news site: “Through vaccination, we have developed resistance and are less likely to be hospitalized, but we are still infected with the new coronavirus.” “The virus can make people seriously ill.” ”
French, GermanDanish data also shows a significant increase in evidence of coronavirus in wastewater.
However, the UK has chosen to end wastewater testing for coronavirus in March 2022. A UK Health and Safety Agency (UKHSA) spokesperson said: register The decision comes at a time when the government has launched a plan to live with COVID-19 in early 2022, following the success of the vaccination programme, and the number of severe cases and deaths from the virus has significantly decreased. Ta.
“At that time, UKHSA was committed to maintaining critical surveillance capabilities, which we still see through our Winter COVID-19 Surveillance Survey with the ONS and our weekly Winter Influenza and COVID-19 Surveillance Report. This surveillance is collecting data on the level of COVID-19 infection, prevalence and hospitalization rates as well. ”
Late last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: Masking policies, at least in hospitals, would be transferred to the state and local level. Time will tell how much the data needs to change before governments can once again lead public health policy. ®