Vermont’s Covid-19 cases on the upswing this summer

After a very quiet spring, Vermont’s sewage is gathering greater traces of Covid-19, a warning sign that the virus is increasing among state residents.

According to John Davy, a health surveillance epidemiologist for the Vermont Department of Health, wastewater measurements are “a really helpful indicator” of how much Covid-19 is spreading in the community because “an infected person sheds into the water no matter if they’re sick or not.”

From March to early June, those measurements remained consistently low. But the amount of Covid-19 in the water now “appears to be significantly higher than earlier in the summer,” according to Davy, though “not yet anywhere near” the rise in cases Vermont saw last winter .

Since early 2023, three water treatment plants in the state — South Burlington, Essex Junction and Montpelier — have been sending samples to WastewaterSCAN, a research program run by scientists at Stanford University and Emory University. Virus concentrations are currently “moderately elevated” in Essex Junction and Montpelier, according to the latest weekly report from the state health department

Davy said he wished the data “had a wider geographic range.” Still, he said the graph “correlated pretty similarly” with the other key metric the health department uses: emergency department visits.

Through a surveillance program called ESSENCE, enrolled hospitals and urgent care clinics in Vermont report the number of emergency department visits they receive in which the patient has Covid-19. This does not mean the visit was necessarily because of the virus, but simply that the patient was diagnosed with it while there.

This measurement gives the state health department “a good snapshot” of how cases are evolving in Vermont, according to Davy. The number of emergency department visits with Covid-19 has ticked up since June, just the same as the wastewater virus detections.

“We had a lot of new outbreaks reported this week in nursing homes,” Davy added.

For the moment, however, the recent number of deaths from the virus remains low, according to the report. There were two deaths reported in June, and another two reported so far in July. Last January, there were 29.

Whether the virus continues to multiply from here is difficult to predict, according to Davy. Though last summer also saw a surge in Covid-19 cases, that doesn’t guarantee that this summer will see the exact same pattern, he said.

“Covid hasn’t found a truly seasonal pattern the way the flu has,” Davy said.

Recent rule changes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed the way Vermont tracks its Covid-19 cases. And the apparent decreased severity of the virus, while a welcome development, has also made the state health department’s job more difficult, according to Davy.

He continued, “The good news is that the virus seems to be making people less sick. The bad news is that we don’t hear about it.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s Covid-19 cases on the upswing this summer .