Bay Area medical experts explain why COVID numbers are trending up and who is most at risk

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- COVID-19 is increasing across the country and in the Bay Area.

"The summer surge is upon us. We have seen an increase in the number of COVID patients coming and seeking care in our emergency department," said Dr. Nida Degesys, Assistant Medical Director, UCSF Parnassus Adult Emergency Department.

In the Bay Area, according to California Department of Public Health data, hospitalizations began to go up in June. Numbers are still increasing, but are not as high as in January during the winter surge.

The increase is also showing up in wastewater samples from three Bay Area water plants, which reveals a higher rise than hospitalization numbers.

"They are still trending upward. We are not sure how high they are actually going to get," said Alexandria Boehm, Stanford professor in Environmental Studies Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "The levels right now are actually almost as high as they were during the omicron surge which happened in 2022."

Nationwide, while COVID-19 hospitalizations are increasing, it's at a much lower rate compared to past surges -- similar to Bay Area hospitalization trends.

Dr. Degesys is seeing more COVID-19 cases, but said patients are not as sick as in the early days of the pandemic.

"They are fully vaccinated, so we are very lucky to have a very high proportion of our patient population fully vaccinated," said Dr. Degesys. "Their symptoms are not as serious, they are able to get better in a few short days and they are not needing the high levels of respiratory care they needed in previous surges when we didn't have vaccines."

The groups most impacted are those 65 years and older and individuals who are immunocompromised.

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"They mount a less robust immune response to the vaccine and therefore they are less protected after booster vaccination," said Nadia Roan, UCSF professor and senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes. "So, a lot of the hospitalization cases that you are seeing are amongst these elderly or immune compromised individuals."

Dr. Roan is urging people to get boosted.

"If you are elderly or immune compromised you can end up with severe COVID. You can end up in the hospital and you can even end up dying from COVID," said Dr. Roan. "Now, for individuals that are young and have a generally healthy immune system, I would say it is still important to boost immunity."