Health and Medicine
PUBLISHED
The number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United Kingdom due to COVID-19 has significantly increased from August, and is rising every week.
In the United States, the situation is more complex due to the variety of climates, habits, and vaccine availabilities. Nineteen states have reported infections as growing or likely growing, while they are declining in 8 states.
When it comes to the UK, it is too early to say when this COVID-19 wave will peak. Last year, the peak was around October 12 with more than 2,500 hospitalizations in the daily count. On September 30 this year the number was about half of this, at 1,104.
The number of weekly deaths is, thankfully, also much reduced, but it's important to note that this has also increased over the last few weeks.
XFG, Stratus, or the “American” Strain
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is monitoring this data, but it has not found the leading variant - called XFG, Stratus, or, in some of the media, the “American” Strain - more virulent or dangerous than other variants in circulation.
“As increases in hospitalisations are rising in line with overall increases in COVID-19 circulation - rather than rising sharply on their own - this suggests a general increase in COVID-19 activity rather than a variant causing more severe disease,” the UKHSA said in a statement.
The reason for the current rise is likely due to multiple factors. The summer has been particularly hot in the UK, which might have kept more people outdoors until recently. It is also a year since the last significant wave, so immunity from the vaccine and previous infection might be waning.
The current tracking from the Center for Disease Control in the United States is not as thorough, but you can check their wastewater monitoring state by state. There is also WastewaterSCAN, based at Stanford University, that is also tracking infectious diseases via wastewater.
Symptoms of the COVID-19 Stratus subvariant
Stratus is one of the over 1,000 subvariants of the Omicron lineage. Because there are now so many, they mostly get given a code such as XFG. Only those strains that become more well known are given a nickname, and for Stratus and its predecessor Nimbus, the theme was clouds.
“So far, these sublineages of Omicron have much in common: they are all highly transmissible, replicate in the upper respiratory tract and tend to cause less severe disease compared to previous variants of concern, and they all have mutations that make them escape built-up immunity more easily,” explains the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
“This means that they are similar in their impact on public health, and the response that is needed to deal with them.”
Being part of the Omicron family means a series of standard symptoms: cough, congestion, fatigue, headache, and sometimes a fever.
Some people have also experienced gastrointestinal symptoms. The Stratus variant appears to be accompanied by a hoarseness in the throat, including a scratchy or raspy voice that can persist for days.
