United States: COVID-19 cases are starting to rise again after a summer surge. Dr. Ulysses Wu from Hartford HealthCare said that cases increased a lot a few weeks ago, then went down, but are now going up again. He also mentioned that this rise happened a bit earlier than usual
New Variant KP3.1.1 Driving the Increase
As reported by Hartford Courant, “A lot of this is being driven by the new variants,” he said, particularly the KP3.1.1 variant of Omicron, which “is now becoming the predominant variant, and its ability to infect people is probably a little bit better and more efficient than other variants that it previously came from.”
And also, its because its’s been summer and its driving people indoors which increases your risk for the transmission,” Wu said.
Impact of Summer and New Respiratory Diseases
He said the new variant doesn’t necessarily cause worse illness.
And also, for the most people, the majority who get COVID Omicron will do OK he said and however, it’s not benign we are certainly seeing the people still being hospitalized and still people being ventilated and unfortunately still people that are dying from this disease.”
There also is still a chance of developing long COVID, he said.
Hospitalizations and Recommendations
Wu said hospitalizations peaked at 140 state-wide on July 22, then dropped to 108 on July 31, then rose to 126 two days later. That compares to numbers in the 70s a month ago, he said.
Wu said masking and vaccinations are still the best protection against COVID, and “there should be a new vaccine that will be coming for the new respiratory season. So that in combination with masking, when masking is done correctly and the right masks are worn, you’re not only going to protect yourself against COVID but all the other lovely respiratory diseases that are circulating out there.”
Besides rhinovirus which basically causes the common cold, Wu said that there are adenovirus human and metapneumovirus, parainfluenza, mycoplasma and that’s the bacteria that causes the quote and unquote walking pneumonia and these are all still circulating out there.
