NEW YORK (AP) — As coronavirus cases rise in some parts of the world, experts are keeping an eye on a possible new wave of COVID-19 in the United States and wondering how long it will take to detect it.
Despite improvements in monitoring the disease in the last two years, they argue that some recent developments bode well:
—With the generalization of rapid detection tests for COVID-19 at home, fewer people undergo the reference tests on which the government relies for counting cases.
—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon use fewer labs to look for new variants.
—The health authorities are focusing more and more on hospital admissions, which only pick up when the new wave is already a reality.
—The sewage monitoring program remains a puzzle that cannot yet be counted on to extract the data needed to understand the new surges.
—The White House says the government is running out of funds for vaccines, treatments and tests.
“We’re not in a great situation,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a pandemic researcher at Brown University.
Scientists acknowledge that the widespread availability of vaccines and treatments put the country in a better position than when the pandemic began, and that monitoring has come a long way.
For example, this week scientists praised a six-month-old program that tests international travelers arriving at four US airports. Genetic tests carried out on a sample taken on December 14 made it possible to detect a variant of the coronavirus — BA.2, derived from the omicron — seven days before any other case reported in the country.
More good news: Cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the United States have been on a downward trend for weeks.
But the situation is different in other parts of the world. The World Health Organization reported this week that infections have risen for the second consecutive week globally, possibly due to the removal of COVID-19 prevention measures in many countries and because BA.2 spreads more easily.
Some public health experts aren’t sure what this means for the United States.
According to the CDC, the BA.2 variant is responsible for a growing percentage of infections in the country, with more than a third nationwide and more than half in the Northeast. Small increases in the overall case rate have been detected in New York, while hospital admissions rose in New England.
Some of the northern states in the country have the highest incidence rate of BA.2, although they report lower infection numbers, said Katriona Shea of Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. James Musser, an infectious disease specialist at Houston Methodist Hospital, called the national BA.2 case count “confusing,” adding, “What we really need is as much real-time data as possible. .to (make) informed decisions.”
