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California sees COVID cases surge, nears highest summer levels in two years

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If it looks like many individuals round you might be getting COVID-19, you’re not alone.

Federal knowledge present coronavirus ranges in California’s wastewater are surging to ranges not seen in summertime since 2022, indicating a large and worsening unfold of COVID.

“We’re seeing … a particular, particular surge,” stated Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious illness at Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

The surge is clearly obvious in physician’s places of work and clinics the place individuals are looking for outpatient therapy, Hudson stated. However, fortunately, not many individuals are having to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 at this level.

“The wastewater numbers are nonetheless headed up. So we’re undoubtedly seeing an increasing number of instances,” Hudson stated.

She urged folks to check for COVID-19 if they’ve respiratory signs.

“In case you have cough-and-cold signs, at this level, residing in Los Angeles, it is best to actually assume that they’re COVID till confirmed in any other case,” she stated.

This newest surge is being fueled largely by the FLiRT variants — a group of extremely transmissible sibling strains which have out-muscled last winter’s dominant strain, JN.1.

Specifically, one of many FLiRT strains, referred to as KP.3.1.1, has really taken off, Hudson stated. The U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention estimates that that pressure accounted for 17.7% of coronavirus samples nationwide for the two-week interval that ended July 20, up from 6.8% for the prior comparable interval.

At that price of progress, that pressure is more likely to grow to be more and more dominant within the subsequent few weeks, Hudson stated. “So, sadly, I believe we’re going to see much more instances.”

Coronavirus ranges in California sewage are thought-about “very excessive” for a 3rd consecutive week, the CDC stated Friday. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia — house to just about 3 in 4 People — have both “excessive” or “very excessive” coronavirus ranges in wastewater.

For the seven-day interval that ended July 20, the newest knowledge obtainable, coronavirus ranges in California wastewater had been at 93% of the height from the summer time of 2022. They’ve already exceeded final summer time’s top.

Line chart shows COVID levels in wastewater. For the week ending on July 20, the California level is 11.53, considered very high. Nationwide, the level is high at 6.14.

And there are indications that this summer time’s COVID-19 wave might need some endurance. Coronavirus ranges in California wastewater have been “excessive” or “very excessive” for seven straight weeks, with no signal of cresting. The wave from the summer time of 2022 performed out over 16 weeks throughout which viral ranges had been “excessive” or “very excessive,” and final summer time‘s wave lasted eight weeks.

The proliferation of the FLiRT variants could lengthen this summer time’s surge, consultants say, since they present a selected knack for immune evasion.

“It does seem to be we’re spitting out an increasing number of variants much more shortly, and that’s most likely to be anticipated,” Hudson stated. “This virus continues to be very, very new to people, and the virus desires to stay, and the best way that it lives is by evading immunity” — circumventing folks’s defenses by evolving in a approach to maintain the chain of an infection going.

Additionally, “issues are just about again to regular,” Hudson stated, with many individuals abandoning their once-cautious pandemic behaviors.

Even on the Olympics in Paris, COVID-19 is now handled like another respiratory sickness. The protocol amongst contaminated athletes is — in the event that they’re feeling effectively sufficient to coach — to have them put on masks, isolate once they’re not coaching and keep away from sure communal areas such because the fitness center.

Areas throughout California are reporting excessive coronavirus ranges in sewage. Within the San Francisco Bay Space, San José and Palo Alto have usually had high coronavirus levels because the finish of Might. Fresno County well being officers stated final week that coronavirus ranges had been excessive throughout the San Joaquin Valley.

The speed at which California’s COVID-19 assessments are turning up constructive has now exceeded final summer time’s peak. For the seven-day interval that ended July 22, 13.8% of coronavirus assessments got here again constructive. That exceeds final summer time’s most of 13.1%.

Anecdotally, there are a lot of studies of individuals getting COVID-19 from occasions together with weddings, work conferences and flights, inflicting signs robust sufficient to make them depressing for days. Some have been shocked by nastier signs this time round in contrast with earlier bouts of COVID-19, though there are not any indications that the most recent subvariants lead to extra extreme sickness general.

Those that are older or immunocompromised stay at highest danger.

A whole lot of COVID-19 deaths are nonetheless reported nationally each week. Amongst those that have just lately died of issues from COVID-19 and pneumonia was the journalist Dan Collins, 80, who co-wrote “Grand Phantasm: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11.”

His spouse, New York Instances columnist Gail Collins, wrote that she and her husband each acquired COVID-19. “It felt like a nasty chilly on my finish, however Dan wakened one night time unable to breathe in any respect. We went to the closest hospital’s intensive care unit, and he by no means recovered,” she wrote.

General, deaths and hospitalizations from COVID look like decrease than these final summer time.

In Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, there have been a mean of 286 COVID-19-positive folks in hospitals for the week that ended July 20. That’s flat from the prior week’s determine of 291, and about half as many as final summer time’s peak and one-quarter as many as the height of summer time 2022.

At UC San Francisco, COVID-19 hospitalizations appear to have stabilized, however “there’s plenty of COVID exterior the hospital. Virtually all people has it: There’s been outbreaks at, you realize, music gatherings and other people’s dinners,” stated Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious illnesses knowledgeable there.

There could also be a number of causes behind the preliminary indicators of hospitalizations stabilizing, Chin-Hong stated. Normally, inhabitants immunity towards COVID-19 is larger. Additionally, it’s doable that the introduction of COVID-19 antiviral pills resembling Paxlovid and its widespread availability could also be preserving at-risk folks from the hospital.

However with COVID-19 infections growing or likely growing in 35 states, in addition to the nation’s capital, Chin-Hong instructed that higher-risk individuals who aren’t up-to-date on their COVID-19 vaccine ought to get it now, and never wait till the up to date autumn model turns into obtainable.

Everybody age 6 months and above ought to have acquired an up to date COVID-19 vaccination beginning in September, based on CDC pointers. These 65 and older ought to have acquired a second vaccination dose 4 months after their first up to date dose. Many seniors, nevertheless, haven’t had even a single up to date dose.

Immunocompromised people ought to have acquired one or two doses of the up to date vaccine since September, and should get extra vaccine doses two months after their final beneficial dose.

“It’s not displaying any indicators that it’s happening,” Chin-Hong stated of the COVID-19 wave. “It’s a good suggestion for many who are older or immune-compromised to nonetheless get it proper now. As a result of by now, I’d have thought that COVID could be plateauing and happening, but it surely doesn’t appear that means — most likely, as a result of the remainder of the nation has caught up” with states resembling California.

In just one state, Hawaii, did the CDC estimate that COVID-19 is more likely to be declining.

By quite a lot of metrics, COVID-19 indicators are persevering with to rise in L.A. County. For the week that ended July 21, L.A. County reported a mean of 413 instances a day, up from 359 the prior week. Formally reported instances are thought-about an undercount, as they don’t account for at-home assessments or the truth that fewer individuals are testing on the whole, however the figures are nonetheless useful in understanding transmission developments.

Coronavirus ranges in L.A. County wastewater had been at 40% of final winter’s peak over the 10-day interval that ended July 13. That’s up from 36% for the 10-day interval that ended July 6.

For the weekly interval that ended July 21, 3.4% of emergency-room visits in L.A. County had been associated to the coronavirus. That’s up from 2.8% for the prior week.

Hudson inspired folks to check repeatedly if they’ve signs of COVID-19, even so far as the fifth day after the onset of sickness. Individuals who really feel sick would possibly check adverse over the primary or second days

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Passengers evacuate after American Airlines plane catches fire on tarmac of Denver airport

Passengers describe emergency touchdown at Denver Worldwide Airport, airplane catching hearth

Passengers describe emergency landing at Denver International Airport, plane catching fire

03:56

An American Airways airplane carrying 178 individuals caught hearth on the tarmac after making an emergency touchdown at Denver Worldwide Airport Thursday night, forcing passengers to evacuate by climbing out onto a wing. Airport officers mentioned 12 passengers had been taken to a hospital with minor accidents.

A nonetheless picture from a video taken at Denver Worldwide Airport exhibits hearth coming from an American Airways airplane on Thursday night, March 13, 2025.

Just4kicks/TikTok

The hearth began simply earlier than 6 p.m. Mountain Time after the airplane, a Boeing 737-800, diverted to the airport attributable to what seemed to be an engine situation.

The Federal Aviation Administration instructed CBS Information in a press release that American Airways Flight 1006 had departed from Colorado Springs Airport and was sure for Dallas Fort Value Worldwide Airport when the “crew reported engine vibrations.”

“After touchdown and whereas taxiing to the gate an engine caught hearth and passengers evacuated the plane utilizing the slides,” the FAA mentioned.

Passengers evacuate an American Airways flight after it catches hearth on the tarmac of Denver Worldwide Airport. March 13, 2025.

Steve Schilsky

In a separate assertion, American Airways mentioned the airplane skilled an “engine-related situation” after it had landed and taxied to the gate.

The airline mentioned all 172 passengers and 6 crewmembers obtained off and had been “being relocated to the terminal.”

The airplane wound up parking at gate C38 at Concource C.

A number of movies posted on social media present flames coming from the airplane and folks evacuating by climbing onto a wing. Heavy smoke was seen coming from the airplane throughout the chaotic scene.

Passengers hurry to security after American Airways Flight 1006 caught hearth on the tarmac and was evacuated at Denver Worldwide Airport on March 13, 2025.

Alexandria Cullen

An airport official instructed CBS Information the hearth was extinguished quickly afterwards.

A member of the family of one of many passengers instructed CBS Information Colorado that every one the baggage was taken off the airplane and the passengers had been being rebooked for a flight that was scheduled to depart Denver for Dallas at 1 a.m. native time Friday. American Airways later confirmed that it was sending a alternative plane and crew to assist clients proceed on to DFW.

One passenger, Gabrielle Hibbitts, instructed CBS Information Colorado that, “As quickly because the airplane landed, we smelled this bizarre burning plastic scent after which everyone began screaming and saying there was a fireplace.”

She mentioned as soon as she and her sister had been a secure distance away, “We noticed the airplane … and there was smoke in all places.”

Their mom, Ingrid Hibbitts, instructed CBS Information Colorado, “It was surreal. I used to be like, ‘Is that this gonna blow up. … What’s occurring right here? Are they gonna have the ability to put out the hearth?’ I am actually grateful that this occurred on the bottom as a result of if this occurred within the air, I do not assume I would be standing right here telling you the story.”

Robert Sumwalt, a former chairman of the Nationwide Transportation Security Board, mentioned the emergency response on Thursday exhibits “the significance of getting well-trained pilots, well-trained flight attendants, well-trained airport rescue and firefighting personnel and air site visitors controllers, all working collectively to make sure a secure consequence when one thing like this occurs.”

Sumwalt mentioned it is doubtless the FAA investigation into the incident will concentrate on when and the place the hearth began.

“We have to actually perceive precisely when this smoke began and … I am unsure precisely why impulsively, once they obtained to the gate, the smoke began filling the passenger cabin. I feel that will likely be part of the investigation,” Sumwalt mentioned.

Kris Van Cleave and

Kathryn Krupnik

contributed to this report.

Jesse Sarles

Jesse Sarles manages the online content material and web site operations for CBS Colorado. He writes articles about Colorado information and sports activities in and across the Denver space.

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Judge jails recycling plant owners in Watts toxic waste case

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The house owners of a recycling plant accused of exposing South L.A. highschool college students to poisonous waste and steel projectiles for many years will spend a number of days in jail after a decide decided they violated a court docket order.

Matthew Weisenberg and Gary Weisenberg, the house owners of S&W Atlas Iron & Metal, have been handcuffed and led away from a downtown L.A. courtroom Thursday morning after Superior Courtroom Choose Terry Bork discovered they’ve continued to pose a threat to the neighborhood by accepting canisters that held explosive supplies onto their web site. A bail listening to is about for Monday.

The Weisenbergs are awaiting trial on 25 counts of failing to correctly get rid of hazardous wastes and failing to attenuate the chance of publicity or hearth at their Watts plant, which has operated subsequent door to Jordan Excessive College for about 70 years.

The fees got here after years of protests from neighborhood activists, college students and a lawsuit by the L.A. Unified College District, which alleged Atlas allowed “harmful, sharp steel projectiles, effective metallic mud and different objects to be launched or emitted from their property.”

In June 2023, former Dist. Atty. George Gascón introduced felony expenses in opposition to the corporate and the Weisenbergs, alleging the plant uncovered Jordan college students to harmful explosions and lead ranges discovered to be 75 instances increased than these deemed protected by the U.S. Environmental Safety Company.

An explosion on the Atlas grounds left Jordan college students jarred on the primary day of college final 12 months, officers mentioned.

The Weisenbergs have been out of jail on their very own recognizance for the reason that expenses have been filed, however prosecutors filed a movement contending they violated the phrases of that launch earlier this month, after an investigation by the state’s Division of Poisonous Substances discovered a number of containers of acetylene, a extremely flammable fuel, on the property.

L.A. Superior Courtroom Choose Ricardo Ocampo had ordered Atlas to not settle for any fuel containers that hadn’t been minimize or punctured, as to keep away from potential future explosions. The Weisenbergs’ protection attorneys, Vicki Podberesky and Benjamin Gluck, argued their shoppers separated the offending acetylene canisters as quickly as they have been found and stored them away from equipment that might trigger an explosion.

“There’s proof of an actual effort to conform. I perceive it broke down. I perceive the court docket doesn’t need canisters to be accepted full cease,” Gluck mentioned. “We wish some steering as to what we are able to do if somebody drives a canister onto our property.”

Gluck mentioned it will be unlawful for Atlas staff to take away the canisters from the property on their very own, and an organization that makes a speciality of elimination of hazardous waste had but to conduct a pick-up on the time of the March 6 go to from an investigator with the Dept. of Poisonous Substances.

Bork was not swayed.

“The issue is that they’re not in the midst of the desert, they’re proper over the wall from tons of of highschool college students,” Bork mentioned.

“One thing broke down within the protocols that Choose Ocampo ordered and relied upon when he made his resolution to not assign bail or to remand the defendants into custody,” he continued, including that the “protocol has been ineffective to remedy the chance of hurt.”

An Atlas spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Bork ordered the Weisenbergs jailed till he can maintain a listening to to find out a correct bail quantity on Monday.

“Right now is the primary time the house owners of Atlas metals have felt the implications for his or her a long time of harm to the Watts neighborhood,” Genesis Cruz, former scholar of Jordan Excessive College mentioned in a press release. “We stay hopeful that this step alerts the top of their reckless and harmful operations and the hurt prompted to generations of scholars.”

Occasions Workers Author Clara Harter contributed to this report.

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Opinion | Pope Francis Projects a Lonely Moral Voice in a New World of Politics and Trump

Pope Francis has been in a Rome hospital for a month, battling double pneumonia and its issues. His situation can be severe for anybody however may very well be extra threatening for an 88-year-old man who had a part of a lung eliminated as a youth and who stubbornly refuses to decelerate. Whereas the Vatican reported this week that he’s enhancing, he could also be so weakened that, some have speculated, he may determine to step down.

Both approach, the destiny of a pope stays of nice concern among the many world’s roughly 1.3 billion Catholics and a supply of heightened curiosity for individuals who see Francis as an more and more lonely ethical voice on the world stage and surprise what sort of pope will ultimately succeed him.

The craving for a pacesetter who places the wants and pursuits of others — together with the least highly effective — forward of his personal is felt particularly among the many many Individuals as we speak who desperately search a light-weight contained in the darkness of Donald Trump.

For this pope has emerged within the face of perilous international developments which have at occasions left the forces of liberal democracy reeling — nationalism, populism, disinformation, xenophobia, financial inequality and authoritarianism. A world with out a pope like Francis will in some methods resemble a Hobbesian dystopia with out a prophet pointing to our higher angels or a wise idealist exhibiting a greater approach.

Francis has turn into much more outspoken as these worrisome political developments accelerated, particularly with Mr. Trump’s electoral victory. Shortly earlier than the onset of his present sickness, Francis took direct purpose at Mr. Trump’s mass deportation coverage and demonization of immigrants. “What’s constructed on the premise of drive,” Francis warned in a unprecedented letter to American bishops, “and never on the reality concerning the equal dignity of each human being, begins badly and can finish badly.”

The pope proclaimed his imaginative and prescient nearly instantly after he was elected 12 years in the past this month as the primary pope from the Southern Hemisphere, the primary Jesuit pope, the primary to take the identify of the saint from Assisi. He traveled within the sweltering warmth to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, the place so many migrants have landed or the place their boats and our bodies had been misplaced and celebrated Mass on an altar made from the wood of refugee boats.

Francis has additionally persistently denounced the harmful temptation of populism and the rise of “a myopic, extremist, resentful and aggressive nationalism.” On a 2021 go to to Athens he warned towards the worldwide “retreat from democracy,” a political system he referred to as “the response to the siren songs of authoritarianism.” Unifying world powers in a shared battle towards international warming has been a central theme of his papacy as properly.

The pope is not any starry-eyed moralist. “Actuality is bigger than concepts,” as he likes to say, and he’s life like about how the world works. He hates ideologies that hijack minds and hails the old school politics that will get stuff executed. Politics “is a each day martyrdom: searching for the widespread good with out letting your self be corrupted,” he has told aspiring politicians.

Warning against “propaganda that instills hatred, divides the world into mates to be defended and foes to be fought,” the pope has forcefully pushed for an inclusive church and an inclusive world. Just like the Gospels, Francis was a D.E.I. exponent earlier than that turned a foul factor, and he stays convincing as a result of he focuses on the ethical core of what variety, fairness and inclusion imply and why they’re essential. The keys are humility and mercy.

Learn the pope’s remarkable address to a joint session of Congress in 2015: Francis channeled not simply Catholics corresponding to Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day but in addition figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. “To mimic the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is one of the simplest ways to take their place,” Francis stated, including, “We should transfer ahead collectively, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the widespread good.”

Having a Roman pontiff as a bulwark of liberal values may, after all, be seen as ironic. The Catholic Church till the center of the final century was, formally at the very least, no champion of democracy or spiritual freedom or different rules that Individuals, most notably, see as foundational.

Or used to. Now we now have the pope selling most of the rights and rules that a lot of America appears to be turning towards. However that is the place we’re. “On this time of neo-imperial powers, I believe that the Catholic Church is the very best anti-empire — warts and all — that we now have,” the Villanova theologian Massimo Faggioli recently said.

That slim hope hinges on who will ultimately succeed Francis. Some Catholics (together with key gamers within the U.S. administration) harbor fever goals of a Trumpian pope who would purge the church of liberals and gays and anybody thought-about heterodox.

However there are not any viable papabili, or papal candidates, within the Trump mould and fewer political conservatives within the Faculty of Cardinals — whose members elect the pope and have been largely appointed by Francis — than there have been just a few years in the past. Mr. Trump’s bullying approach of working might even result in a backlash among the many cardinals and a papal successor much less pleasant to Trumpist populism than there may have been a yr in the past.

The end result of the following conclave may properly be thought-about a political take a look at for Mr. Trump and his motion, a lot because the conclave of October 1978 despatched a message to the Soviet Union. In that election, the cardinals selected Poland’s Karol Wojtyla, a 58-year-old mountain-hiking cardinal from behind the Iron Curtain, who turned John Paul II. “What number of divisions does the pope have?” Stalin as soon as requested when warned about offending the Vatican. Stalin’s successors discovered the reply the onerous approach: John Paul II helped deliver down Communism.

In fact, the delineation between good and evil is much less clear as we speak. The Soviet successor is authoritarian Putinism, which doesn’t match neatly into an East-West paradigm, and Francis, in a latest message from the hospital, lamented what he termed the world’s “polycrisis.” The answer would require what he as soon as referred to as an “artisanal path” to a handmade peace created by the each day actions and selections of people.

This can be a more durable route in a seemingly extra sophisticated post-Chilly Warfare world. However as Democrats flounder about for a message to counter Mr. Trump, they may do worse than hearken to a pope who has been preaching one for greater than a decade.

David Gibson is the director of the Middle on Faith and Tradition at Fordham College and has coated the Vatican as a journalist for 4 many years.

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