As COVID levels have dropped in the water supply and now that everyone knows very few people get majorly ill.

The levels of SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 infection, has dropped by 5 percent in the two weeks between Aug. 30 and Sept. 13, according to data from Biobot Analytics, a platform that tracks COVID-19 through wastewater. The presence of the virus rose in the Northeast, Midwest, and West, but declined in the South.

Amy Kirby, team lead for the National Wastewater Surveillance System at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in February 2022 that 

40 to 80 percent of people with COVID-19 shed viral RNA in their feces, making wastewater and sewage "an important opportunity for monitoring the spread of infection.”

According to data tracked by the CDC, wastewater sites where virus levels rose by 10 percent to 99 percent declined between Aug. 30 and Sept. 12. However, sites where the virus levels rose by 100 percent or more showed an uptrend. The CDC notes that data may be “subject to reporting delays.”

The decline in COVID levels as reported by Biobot and at some wastewater sites per the CDC comes amid a rise in hospitalizations from the infection.

For the week ending Sept. 9, there were 20,538 new COVID-19 hospital admissions across the United States, up from 17,397 admissions for the week ending Aug. 26. It is also more than three times the 6,314 admissions for the week ending June 24.