SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - A summer surge of COVID-19 infections has hit California, and San Diego is feeling the impact.
"We're seeing a lot of cases here in the ER," says Dr. Andrew Eads from Sharp Memorial Hospital. "Not a a shift goes by that I'm not diagnosing somebody with COVID. "
Right now, the CDC has California as one of just 8 states with "Very High" levels of viral activity in its wastewater. Health experts like to use that metric to measure COVID because it gives a more accurate look at how widespread infections are, as opposed just looking at case numbers.
In many instances, cases go unreported because people either test at home or don't test at all.
In San Diego, the positivity rates from tests that are being done have skyrocketed over the past two months. The County Health and Human Services Agency says it's gone from 5.9% at the beginning of June to nearly 19% at the end of July.
"I think this is the most COVID that we've seen here in quite a while, maybe anytime in 2024 I don't think I've seen as much COVID as I'm seeing now," Dr. Eads says. "So I call this the biggest surge we've seen in a long time."
Beacuse of that, Dr. Eads says people need to pay more attention to how they feel, especially if they're in a high risk category.
"I think that if you're somebody who's at risk for complications from COVID, like if you have diabetes, obesity, heart disease, other things that would put you at risk, then maybe think twice about going to large gatherings or places where you would potentially be in contact with people who would have the disease" says Dr. Eads. "Wear a mask, wash your hands, do all the things you know, to prevent infection."
Current COVID surveillance numbers are higher than they were last summer, and nearly as high as the summer of 2022. But, they're still not as high as what we saw during the winter surge. And they're well below the amount of infections we saw during the heart of the Pandemic.
Dr. Eads also notes that hospitalizations are down because the infections he's seeing don't seem to be as severe, particularly among younger patients.
Still, he advises all of his patients to stay up to date on COVID vaccine boosters, which offer the best protection against new strains and variants that arise.
