Covid-19 Weekly Brief

I thought I’d try to keep up the weekly video data updates for the time being. This one’s five minutes on the metrics and two more on BA.2. For those who don’t want to watch the video, I’ve included the current United States Covid-19 data below, followed by a brief overview of BA.2 in the United States. I pulled the current data from the CDC (cases, deaths, positive testing percentage) and HHS websites (hospitalization and ICU census).

US Covid-19 Data

Cases (7-day Average, CDC Data)

• Current: 26,106 (4/1/2022)

• Last Week: 26,310 (-0.8%)

• Notes and Trends

  • Down 96.8% from the recent wave peak

  • Essentially flat for the past 2 weeks (range of 25,252 to 26,711)

  • Down 60.2% from the same day last year

Positive Testing Percentage (7-day Average, CDC Data)

• Current: 2.58% (3/30/2022)

• Last Week: 2.24% (+15.2%)

• Notes and Trends

  • Down 91.3% from the recent wave peak

  • Hit low of 2.13% from March 16-18 and has been rising since

  • Down 50.0% from the same day last year

Hospitalization Census (HHS Data)

• Current: 15,320 (4/3/2022)

• Last Week: 17,189 (-10.9%)

• Notes and Trends

  • Down 90.5% from the recent wave peak

  • Has set new pandemic low every day since 3/31

  • Down 62.3% from the same day last year

ICU Census (HHS Data)

• Current: 1,837 (4/3/2022)

• Last Week: 2,265 (-18.9%)

• Notes and Trends

  • Down 93.1% from the recent wave peak

  • Has set new pandemic low every day since 3/17

  • Down 78.4% from the same day last year

Deaths (7-day Average, CDC Data)

• Current: 585* (4/1/2022)

• Recent Wave Peak: 2,673 (2/2/2022)

• Notes and Trends

  • Down 78.1% from the recent wave peak

  • Down 26.7% from the same day last year

  • *CDC death data backfills over time, and this number could rise.

BA.2 Isn’t Coming—It’s Here

Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have seen my recent tweets decrying “Covid Twitter” perpetually describing BA.2 as the looming monster in the horror film—a slow-walking Jason Voorhees while the soon-to-be victim races wildly in the woods. He’s coming. We know it.

But for BA.2, that’s just not the case. BA.2 has been in the US for weeks. It has been the dominant sub-variant (over 50% of infections) for over a week nationally, and is likely overwhelmingly dominant in much of the Northeast right now (where we’re seeing most of the Covid infection rise in the country). Whether you use the CDC Nowcast data, or outbreak.info, we have already flipped to a BA.2 majority and are now likely moving to higher percentages of the faster sub-variant.

Craig 🌻 @TheLawyerCraig

I still see tweets hypothesizing scenarios for "when BA.2 becomes dominant" in the US. It already is. Whether you look at CDC Nowcast (~55% for the week of 3/20-3/26) or outbreak.info (~60% for 3/18-3/24), we're ~7-10 days past BA.2 taking over as the the majority.

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