United States: The recent reports have suggested yet another end-of-the-year COVID-19 surge. However, it seems to be getting much less attention than it did in previous years.
That has led to this latest upswing, the nickname: the “silent” COVID-19 surge.
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But this does not mean that one should now simply sit in an ‘enjoy the silence’ mode and let oneself be deceived by a false sense of security.
Not taking proper measures could result in one being affected by COVID, both the long and short version of it, warned the experts.
So it should not come as a surprise that colder and drier weather is producing a spike this time of the year like it has every year since 2020.
It just keeps changing and mutating, and it produces more and more versions. As the saying goes, the virus does not speak, but now the XEC variant is leading the pack of the SARS-CoV-2 variant, Forbes.com reported.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that the XEC variant accounts for 45 percent of SARS-CoV-2 cases from December 8 through December 21.
The second highest positive response was recorded for the KP.3.1.1 with 24 percent; the next one was the LP.8.1 with 8 percent. None of the other cousins in the alphabet soup of FLiRT family descendants accounted for as much as 5 percent of this lot.
Wastewater surveillance is just basically considering samples of pooping sewage water to check for the virus. For the week of December 8 – 14, a CDC map of the United States reveals that 21 states had either “high” or “very high” levels of SARS-CoV-2 activity in wastewater samples.
That’s after many states hovered in the moderate-to-low territory through most of the Fall.