If you’re like most people in the U.S., you probably either know someone with COVID-19 right now, know someone who just got over an infection or have the virus yourself.
COVID cases are high as kids go back to school and folks return home from summer trips. It’s part of the COVID pattern, the virus tends to peak in late summer and again in the winter, but just because it’s part of a pattern doesn’t make a COVID infection any less severe, scary or annoying than years past.
While COVID cases are high throughout the country (read: don’t discount your stuffy nose as “just a cold”), cases are particularly high in certain states. Here’s what to know:
COVID cases are high in Texas, California, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico and other states in the West and South Central part of the country.
“We’re seeing COVID increase in many communities across the United States, particularly severe, at least according to our current data tracking, in the West and in the South,” said Dr. Sarah Whitley Coles, a founding member of Those Nerdy Girls, an online organization that’s dedicated to sharing accurate health and science information.
It’s worth knowing that COVID tracking data is less reliable now because of COVID funding cuts by the Trump administration, less testing and the discontinuation of certain tools researchers relied on.
While tracking is less accurate than it was a few years ago, COVID is surging in these regions based on the data that is available, Coles said.
“We are seeing cases increase here in Houston, and in Texas, and if we look at the data that is available from [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], it certainly seems like the South Central U.S. — Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana — are seeing some of the higher test positivity rates in the in the country,” said Dr. S. Wesley Long, the medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist Hospital.
According to Dr. Scott Roberts, an infectious disease doctor at Yale Medicine in Connecticut, “the highest test positivity is in the Texas region … with the second highest kind of broadly being the West Coast. So, the Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada areas, but that does extend through Colorado and then the Dakotas.”
Folks in these areas should take particular caution when spending time indoors and certainly shouldn’t assume any COVID symptoms (runny nose, cough, fever, headache, fatigue, sore throat) are only a cold or allergies….
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