Covid-19 Weekly Update
The latest data as of July 15, 2022
Overall Trends
I regret to inform you that many people in a position of influence are—as I said in last week’s podcast—still on the fool’s errand of chasing smoke. Mask mandates are returning (or are planned) amidst a rise in metrics with the summer BA.5 wave here in the United States.
There is little doubt that infections are likely higher right now than during every wave other than OG Omicron (see Biobot Analytics data, which tracks Covid in wastewater). There is also zero doubt that severe outcomes are a much smaller fraction of infections compared to other waves. Yet technocrats are still hawking the green/yellow/orange CDC Community Level maps. You know the one:
These levels are based on a combination of cases and hospitalizations, despite the fact that they know (or certainly should know) that hospitalizations are chockablock full of incidentals and act much more like a case metric than a severity metric at this point.
Instead, let’s use the ICU-to-case percentage to compare this summer to last summer. ICUs are not immune to incidental infections either, but they tend to be a smaller percentage of the total than hospitalizations. As of this past Friday (using 14-day ICU lag), comparing the ICU census to 7-day-averaged cases gives you 3.65%. What was it the same day last year? 40.16% We’re down over 90% compared to last year comparing these metrics.
The numbers above actually undersell the year-over-year drop though. Why? Testing may well be sitting at pandemic lows right now (excepting the initial wave). Infection levels are higher compared to last year than even cases. Cases are up 349% year-over-year, but infections (based on wastewater data) are up 671%. So, if we were to look at an ICU-to-infection ratio, we’re talking about likely a 95%+ decrease from last year.
But Craig, who cares about ratios? If infections are so high that absolute severity rivals last year, that’s still an issue.
I agree, which is why it’s a good thing that the year-over-year ICU census has stayed negative every single day since early February. And it seems unlikely that our climb will rival anything from last summer. Starting at this time last summer, we were beginning to see 25-45% week-over-week increases in ICU census. Last year, the US ICU census rose from 4k to 10k in just 3 weeks. It reached ~15k a week after that!
As you can see in the data below, ICU census is up 6.5% week-over-week. We haven’t see anywhere near the same torrid pace of increase even as we transitioned through variants—from BA.1 to BA.1.1 to BA.2 to BA.2.12.1 to BA.4/5. Cases and infections during summer 2021 are simply not equivalent to those this summer.
The metrics as of this past Friday, July 15, are below.
US Covid-19 Data
Cases (7-day Average, CDC Data)
Current: 126,024 (7/14/2022)
Last Week: 107,573 (+17.2%)
Notes and Trends
Up 408.1% from Omicron low point (24,804) on 3/29/2022
Up 349.2% from the same day last year
Infections (Biobot Wastewater Data)
Current: 1087 copies/mL (7/13/2022)
Last Week: 931 copies/mL (+16.8%)
Notes and Trends
Infections this wave are higher than at any time during Covid except the first Omicron wave
Up 915.9% from Omicron low point (107 copies/mL) on 3/9/2022
Up 670.9% from the same day last year (141 copies/mL)
Positive Testing Percentage (7-day Average, CDC Data)
Current: 17.40% (7/12/2022)
Last Week: 17.61% (-1.2%)
Notes and Trends
Appears that we’re closing in on a peak, though it often takes several days for positive testing percentage to settle out
Up 733.2% from Omicron low point (2.11%) on 3/17/2022
Up 305.6% from the same day last year
Hospitalization Census (HHS Data)
Current: 41,456 (7/15/2022)
Last Week: 38,475 (+8.0%)
Notes and Trends
Down 74.3% from Omicron wave peak, up 190.1% from Omicron low
Up 64.5% from the same day last year
ICU Census (HHS Data)
Current: 4,133 (7/15/2022)
Last Week: 3,882 (+6.5%)
Notes and Trends
Down 84.4% from Omicron wave peak, up 188.6% from Omicron low
Down 28.8% from the same day last year
Deaths (7-day Average, CDC Data)
Current: 349* (7/14/2022)
Last Week: 321 (+8.7%)
Notes and Trends
*CDC deaths lately have tended to settle out ~10-15% higher than the number initially reported.
Down 87.2% from the Omicron wave peak
Up 34.0% from the same day last year