Summer Plans: As summer approaches and data on respiratory diseases dwindles, I am moving to my off-season schedule:
For paid subscribers, I’ll be combining weekly updates into a single report. Expect these updates to be less detailed until the fall.
Free subscribers will continue to receive other essays (including one later this week) and posts during the summer months, but I won’t be posting as often.
In the fall, I will return to sending out a free national version of Outbreak Outlook.
ILI
Influenza activity is minimal across most of the United States, with influenza-like illness (ILI) accounting for just 1.7% of all outpatient visits nationally. Wastewater concentration agrees, with all regions of the country experiencing low activity.
California and DC continue to have outpatient ILI rates a bit higher than everywhere else, with low levels of activity. After hovering around 3.3% of outpatient visits for ILI for several weeks, California finally made a small decline to 2.9%. In contrast, DC saw an increase this past week of 1.5 points to 5.9%. However, none of its neighbors have experienced any notable increases in their rates, and D.C. is a small jurisdiction so its numbers tend to jump around.
Hospitalizations for influenza are very low, amounting to 0.1 hospitalizations per 100,000, compared to 8.9 per week at the peak in December.
COVID-19
The bottom line is that Covid-19 activity is low but increasing.
Wastewater data show a clear and sustained uptick in Covid-19 activity since a low in early May. The wastewater sources agree that there is a clear increase in the West, but they disagree about whether it is also increasing in the Northeast and the South.
