COVID-19-related hospital admissions rose for a fifth straight week at 12.5 percent and deaths were up for the first time this summer by 10 percent, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
This also comes after the newest variant being monitored by the CDC — EG.5 — now accounts for about 17.3 percent of U.S. COVID-19 cases.
Three other COVID-19 updates you may have missed:
- Experts have shared concerns over the upcoming fall COVID-19 boosters, noting that the shots should have been made available by now. However, since they target the XBB.1.5 variant, which was the dominant strain at the time of the FDA's recommendation to vaccine-makers, experts anticipate they will still be effective because XBB.1.5 is closely related to circulating variants.
- Between June 2022 and June 2023, instances of long COVID have fallen from 7.5 percent to 6 percent.
- Artificial intelligence may be able to predict COVID-19 hospital admissions, a new study published July 28 in Nature Communications found.