According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Missouri currently has “Very High” COVID-19 Wastewater Viral Activity. But what does this mean for our community as students head back to school?
Dr. Heidi Miller is the Chief Medical Officer for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and said the first thing to know is – don’t panic but be aware.
“Covid still exists, and we've seen a small uptake,” Dr. Miller said. “It's important that people realize that this is still contagious. It's still existing, and they should just watch out for it, especially as we're entering respiratory virus season.”
She said wastewater surveillance in Missouri is showing an uptick in COVID-19 cases, but it’s still much lower than the numbers seen in earlier years of the pandemic and even last winter during the traditional respiratory illness season.
Miller said despite the CDC’s reporting, DHSS currently considers the COVID-19 disease burden in Missouri to be “minimal.”
“Experts within the Department of Health and Senior Services are tracking this really carefully,” Dr. Miller said. “We are doing surveillance and early detection. We're following test positivity, emergency department visits, we're watching hospitalizations and deaths, and then we're really fortunate in Missouri to have this wastewater data.”
Jeff Wenzel is the chief of the Bureau of Environmental Epidemiology, which, in part, oversees the Sewershed Surveillance Project.
He said they receive wastewater samples – that’s raw sewage samples – from throughout the state each week. These are then tested for the amount of viral activity and the variant identity.
“We're currently testing 80 locations around the state that represents about 50% of the state population,” Wenzel said.
According to the Sewershed Surveillance Project, the KP.2 variant currently makes up 75.4% of what’s being seen in Missouri wastewater, and the KP.3 variant is making 21.1%.
Both are both offshoots of the omicron variant and have become more dominant as the summer has gone on.
Locally, Columbia/Boone County Public Health & Human Services has also seen an uptick in reported cases – from 10 to 30 cases per week in June to 81 cases in just the week of August 3rd.
Spokesperson Austin Krohn said it’s important to remember that reporting a positive COVID-19 test to the health department is now voluntary and most people just rely on home tests – so, those numbers are likely an undercount.
Representatives from both Boone Hospital and University of Missouri Health Care said that despite the increase in cases, they’re not currently concerned about the ability of their hospitals to manage patient care.
Dr. Laura Morris, Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory Care at MU Health Care, said the newer dominant variants – KP.2 and KP.3 – may be a bit more contagious than the predecessors, but luckily doesn’t seem to be causing a more serious disease.
"There will likely be an uptick as we bring people back into those close spaces together, and folks who've just finished their last minute summer vacation travel. I think travel this summer is, in particular, one of those triggers that we're seeing — a lot of folks come back with a souvenir and also with COVID."Dr. Laura Morris, MU Health Care
“The virus has changed, and our responses to the virus have changed, and it is no longer fighting us with these high levels of mortality and hospitalization,” Dr. Morris said. “But that does not mean that we are not still at risk, and that there are vulnerable people among us at very high risk.”
She said some of the symptoms to watch out for still include fever, sore throat, headache and body aches, and she recommended staying home until symptoms dissipate and wearing a mask for a few days past that.
Dr. Robin Blount, the chief medical officer at Boone Health, stressed the importance of vaccination. She said it remains the best tool in the fight against COVID-19 spread.
And by more people taking precautions and staying home when sick, vulnerable populations will be better protected from COVID-19 and other potentially fatal illnesses.
“Think of the others around you, and, you know, even though you may not get sick when you get COVID, somebody else can die from it, and somebody else can end up on a ventilator because of it, and then in the hospital for an extended period of time,” Dr. Blount said. “It still kills people. It's still real. So, take care of yourselves and take care of everyone around you.”
She and Dr. Morris both agreed that, as respiratory illness season approaches, it’s also important to get the flu vaccine and the RSV vaccine, if you qualify.
There is currently no date more specific than “this fall” for when local agencies will be receiving the updated COVID-19 vaccine formulation, but DHSS’s Dr. Miller said she expects it to be available this month.
