The US is experiencing its largest summer Covid wave in at least two years

It may be time to dust off the face masks and air purifiers.

It may be time to dust off the face masks and air purifiers. The US is in the midst of a significant Covid-19 wave, and when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updates its wastewater dashboard on Friday, experts expect it to confirm that viral activity levels are the highest they’ve been during a summer surge since the CDC began publicly tracking such data in January 2022. As of August 3, the CDC’s measure of national Covid viral activity in wastewater is at 9.01 and rising - just shy of the peak at 9.28 in July 2022. Before it started rising again in May, it was at 1.36. “Currently, the COVID-19 wastewater viral activity level is very high nationally, with the highest levels in the Western US region,” Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance Program, said in an email. “This year’s COVID-19 wave is coming earlier than last year, which occurred in late August/early September.” Emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths are also ticking up, although not to the same extent as infections, according to the CDC’s Covid dashboard. As of the end of July, the CDC’s dashboard shows about 4 are being hospitalized for Covid for every 100,000 people in a given area, up from a low in May of about one Covid hospitalization for every 100,000 people – the lowest level since the pandemic began. The CDC’s wastewater data closely aligns with what they’re seeing at the nationwide WastewaterScan network, too.