Home testing, new variant add uncertainty to latest round of covid infections – TribLIVE

As dramatic as the covid-19 omicron variant spike was in early 2022, health experts across the world were encouraged to see it drop just as quickly.

In Pennsylvania, the total number of reported statewide positive test results this past Friday was just 598, nowhere near the 33,398 positive tests reported at the peak (Jan. 7, 2022) of the omicron surge in the region.

And in Westmoreland County, daily reported positive test results have dropped since the start of March from 50 to 4.

But, some experts say, the key word there is reported.

Home test kits became widely available last year, and demand took off when the omicron wave hit. But many people who take home tests dont report results to anyone. Nor do health agencies attempt to gather them.

That is a concern with a new variant, BA.2, causing case counts to rise globally.

Mara Aspinall is managing director of an Arizona-based consulting company that tracks covid-19 testing trends. She estimates that in January and February, about 8 million to 9 million rapid home tests were being done each day on average four to six times the number of PCR tests.

Were not in a great situation, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Brown University pandemic researcher. The case numbers are not as much a reflection of reality as they once were.

And while positive test results, hospitalizations and deaths are falling in the U.S., that is not the case everywhere.

The World Health Organization this week reported that the number of new coronavirus cases increased two weeks in a row globally, likely because covid-19 prevention measures have been halted in numerous countries and because BA.2 spreads more easily.

Some public health experts arent certain what that means for the U.S.

BA.2 accounts for a growing share of U.S. cases, the CDC said more than one-third nationally and more than half in the Northeast. Small increases in overall case rates have been noted in New York, and in hospital admissions in New England.

Some of the northern U.S. states with the highest rates of BA.2, however, have some of the lowest case rates, noted Katriona Shea of Penn State University.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said hospitalizations are an important figure that is easier to track.

As the focus shifts to severe disease, the day-to-day tally of cases has less importance, Adalja said. Hospitalizations are in unequivocal indicator of a communitys burden of severe covid-19. Cases are always going to be there with an endemic respiratory virus the goal is to shift cases to the mild spectrum. The focus always shouldve been primarily on hospitalizations as a function of hospital capacity in a given geographic area.

Hospital admissions are a lagging indicator, given that a week or more can pass between infection and hospitalization. But a number of researchers believe the change is appropriate. They say hospital data is more reliable and more easily interpreted than case counts.

Spencer Fox, a University of Texas data scientist who is part of a group that uses hospital and cellphone data to forecast covid-19 for Austin, said hospital admissions were the better signal for a surge than test results.

There are concerns, however, about future hospital data.

If the federal government lifts its public health emergency declaration, officials will lose the ability to compel hospitals to report covid-19 data, a group of former CDC directors recently wrote. They urged Congress to pass a law that will provide enduring authorities so we will not risk flying blind as health threats emerge.

With the Mayo Clinic reporting that roughly 65% of the eligible U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, Adalja said the country is coming closer to the point where covid-19 is an endemic virus, just like the other members of this viral family that cause 25-30% of our common colds.

The U.S. is likely at this point though a combination of vaccination and infection-induced immunity and unlikely to see hospitals face the level of pressure form the virus they felt in the past, Adalja said. The appearance of any new variants would occur in a context of high population immunity and the availability of antivirals and monoclonal antibodies, severely constraining the ability of any new variant to cause the level of disruption its predecessors once could.

Staff writer Patrick Varine contributed.

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Home testing, new variant add uncertainty to latest round of covid infections - TribLIVE