CDC: COVID-19 Infections Rise In Some Parts Of US
The CDC said in a July 18 update that 'COVID-19 activity is increasing in many Southeast, Southern, and West Coast states. COVID-19 levels are ranked as 'low,' the second-lowest level on the CDC's scale, according to the update.
Citing wastewater data for COVID-19, the agency said that positive tests are increasing around the United States, while emergency department visits appear to be increasing among children ages 0 to 4.
Wastewater detections for COVID-19 updated by the CDC suggest that high levels of the virus are being reported in California, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina, and Texas. No states were experiencing very high levels, according to a map from the agency.
Seasonal influenza activity is considered by the CDC to be low, and RSV activity is considered very low, the CDC said. Overall, U.S. respiratory illness activity, which refers to 'how frequently a wide variety of respiratory symptoms and conditions are diagnosed by emergency department doctors,' remains very low.
Other illnesses that are covered in the update include Mycoplasma pneumoniae, sometimes called 'walking pneumonia,' which the CDC said has become elevated in some parts of the United States over the past several weeks. Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a type of bacteria, can cause upper respiratory tract infections but sometimes causes pneumonia, researchers say.
Meanwhile, cases of whooping cough, or pertussis, 'are lower than their peak in November 2024, although they remain elevated in 2025 compared with immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic.' Whooping cough has the highest risk of causing severe disease and complications in children ages 1 and younger, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Symptoms of the bacterial infection include a bout of coughing fits that can last weeks, vomiting while coughing, as well as a characteristic 'whooping' sound that occurs during inhalation after the coughing fits.
The CDC has not updated its COVID-19 variant estimates since mid-June. In the last update, it noted that there were growing proportions of variants such as NB.1.8.1 and XFG, which were both declared 'variants under monitoring' by the World Health Organization (WHO) in May and June, respectively.
'The available evidence on NB.1.8.1 does not suggest additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating Omicron descendent lineages,' the WHO said about the NB.1.8.1 strain. The U.N. health body issued a similar statement about the XFG variant in June.
The NB.1.8.1 appears to have been driving a rise in cases across mainland China since earlier this year. Because of the Chinese Communist Party's history of blocking access to information and publishing inaccurate data, including underreporting COVID-19 infections and related deaths since 2020, information provided by local doctors and health workers is more valuable for understanding the situation on the ground there.
The recent CDC update comes after agency researchers said that COVID-19 appears to follow a twice-per-year pattern. Cases usually peak in the summer, or July through September, before peaking again in the winter, or December through February.
'Our analysis revealed biannual COVID-19 peaks in late summer and winter, a pattern that is expected to persist as long as the rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and cyclical S1 diversity continues,' CDC researchers wrote in a report released earlier this month.
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