Officials urge Americans in five states to be on high alert for new virus variants

Officials are raising the alarm over a Covid surge in the US, as they advise Americans in five states to be on high alert for infections.

Latest CDC wastewater data showed that Covid activity rose to ‘moderate’ nationwide in the week of August 9, the latest available, up from ‘low’ in the previous seven-day spell. Covid levels haven’t risen to this level nationwide since March.

In five states, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Alaska and Hawaii, Covid levels have now risen to ‘very high,’ in another warning sign of rising infections.

Schools in these states have already returned from summer vacation, raising transmission rates of the virus, and each state is home to tourism hotspots, which can lead more people to bring the virus to these areas. 

Officials say the uptick may be driven by the variant, XFG or ‘Stratus’, that reached the US in March and is not more deadly than previous strains but may be more infectious.

Levels of other viruses such as flu and RSV remain low, CDC monitoring shows, but officials are keeping track of the viruses with the official start of the flu season now just a month away.

Revealing the COVID uptick, the CDC said: ‘Wastewater monitoring can detect viruses spreading from one person to another within a community earlier than clinical testing and before people who are sick go to their doctor or hospital. It can also detect infections without symptoms. 

‘If you see increased wastewater viral activity levels, it might indicate that there is a higher risk of infection.’ 

Overall, wastewater data suggested that Covid infections are now rising in 45 states, compared to in 40 over the previous seven-day spell.

Of the five states now at very high levels, four are experiencing an uptick compared to the agency’s previous data.

Hawaii has had very high levels of Covid in wastewater for the last three weeks, estimates suggest, as the state records a ‘summer wave’ of infections. 

Hawaii is often ranked as the top tourist destination for Americans in polls, with about 4.6million visiting the state every year, although numbers this year were slightly below those expected.

Covid hospitalizations have also risen nationwide, up 30 percent with an estimated 1.3 admissions per 100,000 in the week of July 26, the latest data available, compared to one in the previous seven-day spell.

Deaths are not rising, however, with 167 fatalities recorded over the week of July 19, the latest available, roughly similar to the level recorded the previous two months. 

These can take longer to rise, though, because of the time taken for someone to fall seriously ill after being infected and then succumb to the illness.

The figures are far off those at the peak of the pandemic, when there were more than 30 hospitalizations per 100,000 people every week and 25,000 deaths per week.

The hospital admission rate, or proportion of admissions due to Covid, is rising in four of the five states with very high Covid levels, and fastest in Hawaii, where it rose 17 percent in the week of August 9, the latest available, to 3.4 percent of all admissions. 

But there are no suggestions in any of these states that restrictions may be brought in to curb the spread of the infection.

The new variant first arrived in the US in March, after appearing in Southeast Asia in January, with some of the first cases reported in New York and New Jersey.

It is a recombinant virus, meaning it was formed when two other strains of Covid infected the same cell and then swapped genes to create a ‘chimera’ virus.

The World Health Organization has classified the strain as a ‘variant under monitoring’ after lab analysis suggested that it may be more infectious than other currently circulating strains. 

The XFG variant, formed from two Omicron strains, was behind an estimated 14 percent of Covid cases over the week of June 21, the latest date available, up from 11 percent from two weeks earlier. 

The CDC says that it receives little data on variants from the states every year, leading it to have ‘low confidence’ in the estimates, but it warns that the variant is likely causing an increasing proportion of infections.

The agency’s wastewater estimates are based on reports from hundreds of sites across the US that analyze the water for signs of Covid.

An uptick indicates more people are shedding the virus, suggesting that infections are rising. 

It comes after a new study revealed that even mild Covid infections can age your blood vessels by up to five years, increasing your long-term risk for heart disease, strokes and dementia.

Known medically as vascular aging, it sees the blood vessels which carry vital oxygen to organs in the body stiffen and is normal as we get older.

But according to the study, which included 2,390 people from 16 different countries, it is accelerated by the virus. 

It was particularly acute in women, wrote the French researchers in the findings, published in the European Heart Journal.  

Previous studies have shown vascular aging to be linked to an increased risk of developing the memory-robbing illness dementia. 

The latest study also found people who had been vaccinated against Covid generally had arteries that were less stiff than those who were unvaccinated.

And for these people, over the long term, the vascular aging seemed to stabilize or improve slightly.