The U.S. is seeing a significant rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations as it enters Labor Day weekend.
According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 15,067 new COVID patient hospitalizations for the week ending Aug. 19. That marked an 18.8% jump from the week before, and a staggering 86.9% increase over the past month. However, that is still down almost 61% compared to the same time last year.
The minimizers have their go-to phrase - "compared to last year".
We're in the middle of it (source):
But since there are like 5 separate competing variants instead of 1 this time last year, when BA.5 was 83% of cases, it hasn't been spiking as quickly, though it will probably keep increasing.
As soon as BA.2.86 starts picking up, BA.2.86 will probably replace all of these XBB variants and EG.5 pretty quickly with a big spike, though it might be months before BA.2.86 picks up.