If it seems like a lot of people are getting COVID right now, you’re not imagining it.
We’re in the middle of a worldwide summer COVID-19 wave.
A high or very high level of COVID-19 virus is being detected in wastewater in almost every state, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 10 other states have a high amount of COVID in the wastewater.
“We’re now relying on wastewater data because people aren’t testing. We can’t have other reliable measures,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University and former White House COVID-19 response coordinator in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition. He said that based on the wastewater data, “this is turning out to be possibly the biggest summer wave we’ve had.”
This summer’s surge, explained
Jha said we’ve settled into what feels like a more familiar pattern with COVID. Recently, the CDC labeled COVID as being endemic, meaning that COVID is here to stay in predictable ways.
There are two waves a year: one during summer and another during winter. The summer wave tends to be a little smaller, while the winter wave is bigger. But unlike the flu, which has a wave in the winter and almost no cases after, COVID infections can rise in between waves.
“It’s looking like this is probably not a seasonal virus, so it will likely be year-round,” said Dr. Otto Yang, associate chief of infectious diseases and UCLA and professor of medicine in an interview with Morning Edition.
Jha adds that the summer wave this year is still smaller than any of the winter ones, but as far as summer waves go, this has been a substantial one. It started a little earlier than the one last summer, and infections are still rising. Jha is hopeful that the surge will peak and ease soon, but he doesn’t know exactly when that will happen.
New dominant variants causing the spread
COVID is continuing to evolve very rapidly, and every three or four months we get a new COVID variant. This summer, the dominant strains of COVID are KP.3.1.1, accounting for 27.8% of U.S. cases, and KP.3, accounting for 20.1%, according to data from the CDC and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Jha said that these variants evolved from Omicron.
“It doesn’t seem like these variants are more deadly. But they are almost certainly more contagious,” said Yang. “So if you have something that’s equally deadly but more contagious, you will see more severe illnesses and deaths.”
The role a new vaccine out in September could play
A new vaccine is currently being developed to target these new dominant variants. It is expected to come out in September.
“They’re better matched to their variants. The antibodies should work better. And so they would hopefully reduce the number of people that are getting symptomatic COVID and hopefully with that reduce the circulation,” said Yang. Like the current vaccines, Yang expects the new vaccine to work well to prevent severe illness and death.
Jha echoed that the new vaccines will be very protective against the current variants. He said the vaccines available right now are targeted to the variants that were dominant last year, and those are long gone. The COVID vaccines are “not going to provide a lot of protection against infection if any at all. But they would still provide some protection against serious illness,” he said.
If you haven’t gotten your vaccine this year, Jha recommends waiting until the new vaccine comes out in a few weeks for the best protection.
He acknowledges that asking people to make substantial changes to their lives four and a half years into the virus is a tall order. For most people, he said, getting vaccinated is good enough. And if you are high risk and do get infected, treatments like Paxlovid are a great option, he added.
So how often should you get a COVID booster?
Jha said that the recommendation for most people is to get one shot a year, He said there’s evidence that for the highest risk people, like elderly people in their late 70s or 80s or people who are immunocompromised, a second shot in the spring can offer an important level of protection. And for most Americans, they should focus on getting one shot a year.
“What I recommend to people is they get it around the time they get their flu shot, which is usually in late September or October,” said Jha.
Yang, though, thinks it is a good idea for anyone to get a booster if they haven’t had a COVID-19 vaccine in six months.
Even though Jha said this may be the worst summer COVID spike we’ve had, he said there is some good news.
“If you look at deaths from COVID so far in 2024, it’s down pretty substantially from 2023. So yes, we’re getting these surges… but they’re not turning into hospitalizations and deaths at the same kind of numbers we’ve seen in past years,” Jha said. “That’s progress. That’s good news. That is immunity being built up over time. And so each infection just doesn’t mean as much as it did four years ago, or even as much as it did two years ago.”
