For most of the summer, levels of covid in California and the Bay Area have been high.
The test positivity rate has reached 14.3%, up more than 2 percentage points from the previous week, according to Friday’s update from the California Department of Public Health. It is the highest positivity rate has been in a year.
After rising for three months, the positivity rate is quickly approaching the record high positivity rate for a summer rise – 16% in July 2022.
Although test data is no longer available at the local level, Santa Clara County sewage shows that the virus has been spreading at high levels for several weeks. All four sewers – Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Gilroy – have “high” concentrations.
In Contra Costa County, wastewater also shows high concentrations of the virus, and the county’s public health department urged residents this week to wear masks in cramped indoor situations“especially for those at high risk of serious illness if infected.”
“Face masks are an effective tool in reducing the spread of the virus,” Dr. Ori Tzvieli, Contra Costa County’s health director, said in a statement. “This is one of those times. Our health system is not severely affected by covid at this time, and our goal is to keep it that way.”
Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley, thinks Contra Costa Health’s recommendation is “excellent advice.”
“There are still too many people in hospitals and too many people dying,” Swartzberg said, pointing to the fact that annual deaths from COVID still exceed the number of deaths in a normal flu season.
Contra Costa Health attributes the current long-term increase to the FLiRT strains currently spreading in the western part of the country, which they called “particularly infectious.”
“We didn’t have a long break from the winter surge,” Swartzberg said. He also attributes the virus’s stubborn climb this spring and summer to the current array of variants. “The sub-variants of Omicron keep spinning off new sub-variants that are more transmissible and more immune-defensive.”
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