There have been 37 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Piedmont since last week, according to the Alameda County Health Department’s COVID-19 dashboard. COVID case counts in Piedmont on Tuesday stood at 1,419 up from 1,382 on June 28. (Case data is updated daily but may change as the county reconciles its records. Official numbers do not reflect actual local case numbers due to increased use of home testing.)
UCSF’s Department of Medicine Chair Bob Wachter noted in a recent update on social media that the official case count is probably missing approximately 80% of cases due to home tests. He also outlined the risks associated with the emergence of the new variant BA.5:
As we did w/ original Omicron, we need to determine 3 things w/ each variant: infectivity, immune escape, & severity. We know BA.5 is worse on #1 and #2. Severity is still unclear, but we’re seeing worrisome upticks in U.S. hospitalizations (though not yet deaths)
It seems clear that BA.5 will lead to an ongoing plateau, if not a moderate surge, lasting through summer & into fall. Beyond that, much depends on whether a new variant emerges to supplant it. Given the pattern of the past year, it would be foolish to bet against that.
View Wachter’s full Twitter thread from July 3 HERE
The CDC updates its models of circulating variants every Tuesday HERE. On July 2, the BA.5 variant accounted for more than half of all infections nationally:
