COVID-19 is making its summer comeback and there’s a new variant.
Cases began rising again nationwide in July, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and during the week of July 23, hospitalizations in the U.S. rose 12.5%.
In Florida, the Florida Department of Health noted a jump in cases since the July 4 holiday.
New data shows that COVID cases have risen from 5,607 new cases the week of May 12 to 9,942 the week of July 14, a 77% increase in the past 10 weeks.
That’s a lot like the surge Florida experienced last winter, but so far local doctors say the COVID-positive patients they have seen in recent weeks are not as sick as those they tended to during previous waves.
Eris is an unofficial nickname given to EG.5.1, a subvariant of Omicron (B.1.1.529).
It was added to the WHO watch list as part of the EG.5 lineage.
In the two-week period ending in August 5, Eris was found to be the most prevalent variant of coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 17.3% of cases.
However, experts say the current surge is more from summertime travel and people being driven inside by heat and storms than from a new variant, as well as a general relaxation of testing and caution.
The state health department has said about 17% of COVID test results it collected statewide during the week ending July 20 came back positive. It found similar ratios in late July of both 2022 and 2021.
People who have been vaccinated and/or infected a few times are probably protected against severe infection and hospitalization, according to Bill Hanage, co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
Starting this fall, the CDC plans to make the shots freely available to health centers and clinics known as Federally Qualified Healthcare Centers, which mostly serve uninsured people.
