The COVID Digest, 28Apr2022

COVID's on the rise. Will it matter?

COVID-19 cases are rising through much of the country. Let’s take a look at what’s happening. The map below is the Community Transmission map from the CDC. You can locate it here.

We can see that there’s a lot of disease in the northeast, the upper midwest and on the west coast. Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico are also entirely in the red or orange zone. The states seeing the greatest rise in cases over the past week are Wisconsin, West Virginia, Idaho, Arkansas, and Utah.

As I’ve discussed previously, wastewater surveillance can also be an important early warning that things are heating up. And one of the best states for wastewater surveillance is Missouri. SARS-CoV-2 RNA signal is rising in 4 regions in the Kansas City area (red triangles), up from 2 sites last week.

There’s also a rise in St. Louis, where 9 sewersheds are showing an increase in viral RNA signal, compared to 4 last week. These data usually update on Fridays. So we can check to see what changes are reported tomorrow.

The Community Transmission map that was presented at the top shows rising case rates and test positivity for these areas. The wastewater surveillance data, if it continues to show a rise, should be an important warning that things are going to intensify. The statewide graph for wastewater SARS-CoV-2 signal is shown below. It’s not a small increase.