COVID hospitalizations in US increased in July

COVID-19 hospitalizations and emergency room visits have risen slightly in the US this summer, but they are still far below previous years, figures show.

The number of hospital admissions during the week ending July 22 rose 12.1 percent from the previous week from 7,165 to 8,035, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed. Between July 9 and July 15, there was a 10.3 percent rise. Most of the hospitalizations were among older people.

Last month, emergency room visits for COVID rose, so too did the number of people who tested positive for the coronavirus. Some counties in Nebraska, Arizona and Kansas showed hospitalizations were at moderate levels.

In the last week of July, the number of people who visited the ER with COVID-19 rose 17.4 percent, compared with a week earlier, according to the CDC. The areas which saw the highest increases were the Southeast and Northeast.

But data from the CDC shows that the number of hospitalizations and cases is not as bad as they were in previous years. At the peak of the Omicron variant in January 2022, there were more than 150,674 people hospitalized, ABC News reported. Additionally, hospitalizations had been relatively low for the first half of this year.

It is not entirely clear how many people in the US have COVID-19, as most health authorities have stopped reporting and monitoring the cases. The CDC issued its final and 97th COVID data tracker review in May.

The changes to how cases are reported came after President Joe Biden declared an end to the federal COVID-19 public health emergency in May. It meant that states no longer had to report how many residents contracted the virus.

Public health experts say another useful way to detect current levels of COVID-19 is in wastewater. Wastewater data provides important information about the spread of coronavirus because those who are infected shed the virus in their feces.

Traces of coronavirus in national wastewater data rose by 65 percent in July. The areas that saw the most significant increases were in the South and Northeast.

In contrast, the number of COVID-19 deaths across the US has stayed steady and not risen, the CDC found.

At the beginning of July, there were 494 COVID-19 deaths — the lowest number of deaths from the virus since the start of the pandemic in 2020. On June 24, there were 549 deaths from COVID.

During the past few years, the summertime has produced an uptick in hospitalizations and cases. In previous years, the rise was followed by new waves of the virus, spurred by the Omicron and Delta variants.

At least 40 percent of all new cases are being attributed to the XBB.1.5 subvariant strain. A booster to fight against it will be released in the fall. Pfizer expects its version of the booster to be approved by the end of August, NBC reports.

Dr William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University medical center in Nashville, Tennessee, advises that some people must continue to take precautions to boost their immune system, including staying up to date on vaccines and wearing a mask if needed.

Schaffner told China Daily: "Persons 65 years of age and older, those who are frail, people of any age with an underlying illness, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, the very young, of course, at the other end of the age spectrum and a person at any age, who is immune compromised [should be precautious.]"

He also warns that COVID-19 will never completely go away.

"We're going to have to live with this virus for the foreseeable future; it will not disappear," Schaffner said.