United States: While SARS-CoV-2 infections in the US had risen only moderately during the initial months of the respiratory virus season, COVID-19 cases started surging right before the winter holidays.
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In previous years, COVID-19 levels were at their lowest in early November but started increasing by mid-December to their seasonal best throughout December.
However, this year, they were only at near record low across the entirety of October and all of November based on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC’s wastewater surveillance, as CNN Health reported.
From early December, however, there was a rise from low level to high level in the trend of deaths of patients.
COVID-19 activity spiked in the week ending on December 21 to nearly three times the level of the week ending December 7, according to CDC data.
Rise in cases
This surge has occurred in every region of the country, but especially in the Midwest region, where the COVID-19 level is almost double that of other areas in the country.
However, some experts are concerned that the sharp spike after an informed winter inactivity could have exposed many to diseases during the peak end of the year of the Holiday season, CNN Health reported.
According to Dr. Michael Hoerger, a researcher at the Tulane University School of Medicine, the latest wave of COVID-19 transmission was a “‘ silent surge,’ coming on late out of nowhere.”
This winter COVID-19 wave is off to a late start, and experts expect cases to keep rising. Here's what to know. https://t.co/pKOzJybyIo
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 30, 2024
Hoerger once operated a COVID-19 forecasting model based on CDC wastewater surveillance data, per his estimates, without any testing or isolation policies in place, which meant there was a 1 in 8 chance of COVID-19 exposure at a gathering of 10 people on Christmas Day.
In a plane that contained over 100 people, there were 3/4 risks of infection.
An accelerated increase in the number of cases can be attributed to a new coronavirus strain called XEC.
XEC is a combination of two sub-models of JN.1, and it was the Omicron sub-variant that caused most of the cases during the surge experienced during winter, the CDC states.