(NewsNation) — COVID-19 is trending upward again in the U.S. as other respiratory illnesses are plaguing Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of the country has seen an uptick in RSV activity in children and flu activity in all ages, but the most surprising is the increase in COVID-19 cases after a period of limited change, the CDC said.
The CDC doesn’t track COVID-19 testing as closely as it did during the pandemic, but it does still track other COVID-related data.
COVID-19 continues to cause the most hospitalizations and deaths among respiratory illnesses — about 15,000 hospitalizations and about 1,000 deaths every week, said Dr. Mandy Cohen, head of the CDC.
The numbers aren’t as stark as in recent years, but CDC data shows some parts of the country may be seeing more COVID cases than others.
The Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic regions are seeing the greatest coronavirus increases, but hospital occupancy remains stable across the nation, the report said.
The steepest increases so far have been seen in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, according to the CDC’s emergency rooms and wastewater sampling data.
“Remember we had a late summer wave of COVID. We came down from that. We are going back up again, which we expect again, after a lot of travel and gathering at Thanksgiving,” Cohen said at a House committee hearing Thursday.
CBS News reported that nearly two million Americans are now living in counties that have “high” levels of coronavirus hospitalizations. The CDC currently considers 20 or more new COVID hospital admissions per 100,000 people in a week as a “high” level.
The agency has urged the public in those areas to take precautions to curb the spread of the virus.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
