Spread of COVID-19 appears to be slowing in San Diego County – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Coronavirus activity in San Diego County continues to increase, but slowed significantly in the past week, providing a bit of positive news as doses of Novavax, the latest COVID-19 vaccine, begin to arrive.

The latest wastewater data shows that the amount of virus detected in effluent increased from 15.5 million to 19.8 million coronavirus copies per liter of sewage as of Tuesday, before falling to 18.1 million Wednesday. That figure represents a 17 percent increase over a week earlier, but is much less robust than the spike from 8.1 million to 15.5 million observed from July 13 to July 20.

Confirmed cases, though, have not tracked wastewater trends as closely as they have in the past. There were 1,678 positive test results communicated to the countys epidemiology department Wednesday, 329 fewer than the 2,007 cases reported one week earlier.

The previous pattern was for wastewater to increase first, followed by case rates, and to begin declining a bit before cases did.

Why that doesnt seem to be the case at the moment has not yet been fully explained, but Dr. Cameron Kaiser, deputy public health officer for the county health department, said the move to home testing certainly plays a role. County testing centers, he said, are performing about half as many tests as they did during the winter Omicron wave, and home tests generally dont get reported. It also may be that BA.5, the current dominant coronavirus subvariant, causes infected people to shed more virus than previous versions of the virus did, he said.

If theyre shedding more virus per case, then thats a potential explanation, and there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that this might be true for the early Omicron variants like BA.2, Kaiser said. BA.5 is really too new for us to know how big an effect this is.

Thus far, BA.5 is not showing an ability to cause problems in hospitals as Omicron did.

There were 450 confirmed and suspected patients with positive COVID-19 tests in local non-military hospital beds Thursday, slightly lower than the 473 reported one week earlier.

Kaiser said that county monoclonal antibody clinics, which offer a treatment for those newly infected that can significantly decrease the odds of developing severe illness, have recently been quite busy. Such treatment, he said, is likely contributing to COVIDs lower hospital impact, which surpassed 1,200 occupied beds this past winter.

People are definitely getting sick enough to seek treatment, but thats keeping them out of the hospital, Kaiser said.

A loss of critical health care workers due to widespread transmission of the virus causing a wave of sick calls, as occurred with the Omicron wave in late December and early January, seems to have so far been avoided. Sharp HealthCare, the regions largest medical provider, indicated that callouts have held steady at about 500 per day out of its more than 20,000 employees.

A significant update to the vaccination arsenal is also starting to arrive.

It took about two weeks for the Novavax vaccine, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on July 13, to start showing up in vaccination clinics and medical provider pharmacies, but officials reported receiving shipments this week.

Virologist Shane Crotty at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology collaborated with the vaccines manufacturer to confirm its potency, publishing two recent papers that compared Novavax to mRNA vaccines already in wide circulation.

The data indicate that it, broadly speaking, works just as well as the mRNA vaccine, Crotty said in an interview earlier this month.

Unlike mRNA versions from Pfizer and Moderna, the Novavax product is more traditional, delivering coronavirus spike proteins grown in moth cells. These spikes are harvested and packaged into a vaccine with helper compounds made from chemicals found in tree bark that help activate an immune system response. By comparison, mRNA vaccines use snippets of genetic code to prod the bodys own cells to make coronavirus proteins that can train the immune system to recognize coronavirus.

This different route might help produce a response in those with weak immune systems who did not benefit from mRNA inoculation, he said.

If a person gets two shots of an mRNA vaccine, and they respond poorly, yes, I think it probably makes sense for them and their physicians to say, well, OK, lets try Novavax, Crotty said.

There is also some hope that those who have so far refused to get vaccinated might decide that the Novavax shot, because of its more traditional manufacturing method, is acceptable.

In San Diego County, which surpassed 3 million residents with at least one dose on July 14, about 340,000 eligible residents age 6 months and older remain unvaccinated. And an additional 350,000 got their first dose but not their second.

If concern over the manufacturing method is what led people to look for another option, then I have great hopes that Novavax can be that option, Kaiser said.

He pushed back against those who look at dramatically lower COVID-19 death rates and decline to move forward. Thus far, he said, there have been 35 COVID-related deaths in June and 31 in July, though the case review process often causes long delays before deaths are added to the official count.

We dont see months with more than 30 deaths very often with the flu, and certainly not in summertime, Kaiser said.

Novavax is approved only for those age 18 and older.

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Spread of COVID-19 appears to be slowing in San Diego County - The San Diego Union-Tribune