COVID Infections Are Surging Again

Vaccines and prudent action still the best response

By Nick Landekic, contributing writer, RINewsToday

Yes, COVID is still a thing. As expected, we are experiencing the now predictable summer wave, the 13^th surge since the start of the pandemic. Right now it’s estimated 3.4 million people are becoming infected every week and 800 to 1,500 are dying of COVID every week, and infections are climbing fast. The National Wastewater Scan shows high and growing levels of COVID in every participating state.

What’s been happening with COVID?

COVID has fallen into a now more-or-less predictable pattern of surging twice a year, in the summer and winter.

Most respiratory infections like the flu spike in the winter. COVID is different and has been surging twice a year including the summer, for a few reasons.

Immunity waning. Most people who got vaccinated did it in the fall, and most people who got infected did it during the winter wave. By August any protection from either vaccination or infection has waned and you’re susceptible to becoming infected again.

Climate and where we spend our time. Summer means people spend more time indoors in air conditioning, where infection is more likely to spread.

Travel and mixing. Peak travel season, weddings, camps, and family reunions all stack up in the same few weeks, and now schools are reopening as well.

Variant mutations. The SARS-CoV-2 COVID virus mutates very quickly and keeps generating new variants that can evade existing antibodies.

A higher year-round baseline. Flu drops to very low levels between waves so there’s little virus left to work with even when conditions are right for spread. Unfortunately, COVID keeps circulating all year so there’s already more virus around when immunity wanes, behavior shifts, or a fitter variant shows up.

All this means COVID infections are rising again with the surge likely to last for the next couple of months. It’s not possible to accurately predict how much but we may see 1 million new infections daily and perhaps 2,000 COVID deaths per week.