'I'm going out on a limb, but I think they're all going to peak soon,' scientist says of COVID rates

The BA.4- and BA.5-driven COVID wave may have peaked in the Charleston Tri-county area, according to a scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina. And three other areas in the state may be on the same path.

“I’m going out on a limb here, but I think they’re all going to peak soon. They just can’t go on forever, and they’re dropping in other parts of the country,” said Michael Sweat, Ph.D.

The latest trend report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention backs that up, showing COVID cases for the United States as a whole are headed down.

But the picture on the state level is more nuanced than that, according to this week’s update from Sweat’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Intelligence Project. That’s what Sweat means about going out on a limb.

His team tracks COVID in four key sites in South Carolina, places where MUSC Health hospitals are located. This week, two saw a decrease in cases compared with the previous week. But the other two saw an increase.

It was the Charleston Tri-county and Lancaster areas that saw decreases. In Charleston, the decrease was 12%. In Lancaster it was 5%. And the Charleston area had another factor that made Sweat suspect cases will trend down there: Wastewater testing showed decreasing levels of the virus.

 

The areas that saw increases were Florence, where the growth rate was 24%, and the Midlands, where the rate went up 13%. Sweat said it’s unclear why these two areas went up while the other two areas went down, but it’s not unusual for differences to occur as the virus ebbs and flows.

What is unusual is the length of this COVID wave, which started in the Charleston area back in May. “The fact that this has been taking so long to climb makes me worry that it’s going to take a while to go down,” Sweat said.

In the Charleston area, “We primarily have B.5, which is very good at reinfecting people who’ve already had COVID. And we are in a unique situation. In all the other waves, particularly early on, people were really being careful. And I don’t think people are as aware and concerned now about it. So that’s amplifying transmission.”

That amplified transmission led to higher hospital numbers at MUSC Health even though two areas have seen decreases. As of Aug. 8, all of MUSC Health’s hospitals combined were treating 108 cases. That’s up from 99 on July 25. But Sweat said the numbers are manageable for the hospitals. He also encouraged people to keep in mind that while COVID may be going down in some areas, it’s still at a high level. “Realize it’s still here. Try to do what you can.”

Something people may be able to do in October is get an Omicron-specific vaccine. “So that may really put some brakes on this thing for a period of time. The big question is will we have another variant before then? That could reduce the value of an Omicron-specific vaccine.”

So far, that variant hasn’t appeared. “Nothing else has come along, and we’re getting closer to October. So that could really change the nature of things. But I think it wouldn’t last forever, just like the original vaccine wasn’t a permanent solution. We’ll need to keep an eye on things.”

Sweat, who’s a professor in the College of Medicine at MUSC, an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former research scientist with the CDC, said his team will continue to offer weekly updates for as long as needed. COVID, first declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, has been around for about 2 1/2 years so far.  It shows no sign of going away yet.

“The waves are coming at a rate that seems fairly consistent,” Sweat said. “But they’re getting closer together."