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“COVID-19 is still very much with us and circulating in all countries," Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization said in a news conference last week. “Data from our sentinel-based surveillance system across 84 countries reports that the percent of positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 has been rising over several weeks."
Wastewater surveillance suggests that the circulation of COVID is two to 20 times higher than what is currently being reported, according to the WHO, which notes that "there is a growing risk of a more severe strain of the virus that could potentially evade detection systems and be unresponsive to medical intervention."
Texas and California have among the highest levels of COVID, while on the East Coast, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina have very high levels of virus in the community.
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Georgia are reporting high levels of infection.
New waves of infection have been registered in the US, Europe, and the Western Pacific.
"Such high infection circulation rates in the northern hemisphere’s summer months are atypical for respiratory viruses, which tend to spread mostly in cold temperatures," according to the WHO.
At the recently completed Olympic games in Paris, dozens of athletes tested positive for COVID.
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