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They say if you want to know how healthy you are, look in the toilet.
That's what the CDC has sort of been doing to understand Covid-19 trends, only it's more specifically looking at wastewater sample sites across the country.
The news is not so good in Michigan and a third of the U.S., where wastewater suggested rising Covid-19 levels between March 1 and March 10, according to Bloomberg News.
Four of the five sample sites in the state — in Washtenaw, Kent, Genesee, and Jackson counties — showed rising levels, according to the CDC data. The change in the proportion of virus detected in Washtenaw's wastewater was the highest, at more than a 1000% increase.
The number of sites with rising signals of Covid-19 cases is nearly twice what it was during the Feb. 1 to Feb. 10 period, when the wave of omicron-variant cases was fading rapidly.
It’s not clear how many new infections the signs in the sewage represent and if they will turn into a new wave, or will be just a brief bump on the way down from the last one. In many parts of the country, people are returning back to offices and mask rules have been loosened — factors that can raise transmission. At the same time, warmer weather is allowing people to spend more time outside, and many people have recently been infected, which may offer at least temporary protection against getting sick again – factors which would keep cases down.
Another warning sign comes from Europe, where Covid is surging in several countries. U.S. trends reportedly tend to follow what happens there.
