Time: 2024-06-27
Just as summer gatherings begin, Americans are also catching COVID-19 again. Cases predictably rose, in upticks, during the winter with more people indoors. They are also increasing as experts expected at the start of summer. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows small jumps in hospitalizations and deaths and slight increases in new cases. This latest rise in cases shows how the virus has persisted four years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When you begin to see a pattern, you then might say its becoming endemic, Dr. Jessica Justman, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University, told USA TODAY. When something is endemic, that does not mean its going away. That means its staying around.
SARS-CoV-2, like any virus, is constantly mutating so it can infect more people and survive. New variants and sub-variants expand outward like branches from trees, each with different mutations seeking to adapt. As the changes happen, health experts and officials have responded with vaccines and other protections to reduce the risk of serious illness or overwhelmed health systems.
The upticks from the latest sub-variants are nowhere near levels the U.S. experienced in 2020, or when the omicron variant began to drive cases and deaths across the globe in 2021. Hospitalizations and emergency room visits are far less frequent this season than in December. Deaths have not reached the levels of this winter when more than 2,000 people died from COVID-19 each week in January. In the latest CDC estimates as of June 15, fewer than 150 people died of COVID-19.
There are no signs so far that the new LB.1 variant is causing more severe disease in COVID-19 patients, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, as infections have begun to accelerate in this summer's wave around the country. The LB.1 variant currently makes up 17.5% of new COVID cases, the CDC projected Friday, and could be on track to overtake its sibling, the KP.3 variant, which has also been growing in recent weeks.
The reason behind any potential shifts to the symptoms or severity of disease caused by new variants is complex, affected by people's underlying immunity from a mix of past infections and vaccinations as well as changes to the virus itself.
Only a fraction of facilities are still reporting figures on hospitalizations and ICU admissions to the CDC, after a pandemic-era requirement lapsed earlier this year. A proposal by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to incorporate the data reporting into routine requirements is not scheduled to take effect until October.
Where is LB.1 rising fastest? In California, one of the states that saw trends of the virus rise earliest this summer in wastewater to "high" levels, the CDC's COVID-NET data shows hospitalizations were near levels not seen there since February. But the KP.3 variant not LB.1 made up the largest proportion of cases during that early surge, estimates from the CDC as well as California's health department suggest.
Compared to highly mutated SARS-CoV-2 variants that showed up earlier during the pandemic, experts say LB.1's changes are relatively small compared to its parent variant JN.1, which was dominant during this past winter's wave. LB.1 is also closely related to KP.3, which is also a descendant of the JN.1 variant. Unlike KP.3, LB.1 has a key mutation that scientists call S:S31del that looks to be helping it spread faster.
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