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A summer surge in COVID-19 cases has spiked the number of people in the hospital with serious complications from the virus. Nationwide, COVID-related hospitalizations are up 12% in the last week of available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in some U.S. counties, the situation is dramatically worse. The CDC considers COVID-19 hospitalizations to be “medium” in 17 counties around the country. That means between 10 and 19.9 people are hospitalized with the virus for every 100,000 residents. In two places in Texas, Navarro and Freestone counties, hospitalizations were up 250% in a single week – meaning they more than tripled. (Martichoux, 8/2)

Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising in New York, prompting the state health commissioner on Wednesday to urge New Yorkers to get tested if they have a runny nose, headache or other symptoms. Despite the uptick, several epidemiologists expressed doubt that there would be a major wave of cases in the coming weeks, as the mix of Omicron subvariants circulating in New York has not changed dramatically this summer. (Goldstein, 8/2)

In New Jersey, there's been a 28% increase. While hospitalizations in Delaware are down 27%, there's been no change in Pennsylvania. (Stahl, 8/3)

Echoing patterns in prior years, coronavirus infections are slowly ticking up in parts of the country, the harbinger of a possible fall and winter wave. But the numbers remain low for now, and are unlikely to reach the horrific highs seen in previous winters, experts said in interviews. Infections have been trending upward for about four weeks now, according to data gathered from wastewater monitoring, test positivity rates and hospitalizations and emergency room visits. Taken together, the figures offer researchers and public health officials the first glimpse of the coronavirus as a post-pandemic, seasonal threat, a permanent fixture of the infectious disease landscape. (Mandavilli, 8/2)

The anticipated release of the next round of COVID-19 booster shots has been pushed back, with updated vaccines targeting the XBB.1.5 omicron variant now expected to arrive later than expected. Health officials initially had projected the doses would be delivered by September, aligning with this year’s flu shot rollout. But the new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the timeline has shifted. (Vaziri, 8/2)

When the COVID-19 vaccines began rolling out, there were initially two big ones that folks in the U.S. could choose from: Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. While both are completely safe in guarding against the coronavirus, the question of which one to choose was one that many people seriously considered—sometimes leading to memeified tribalism. However, now that we’re a few years into the rollout, scientists have had time to research their effectiveness among certain segments of the population—and now we have a much clearer picture about which vaccine might be good for who. (Tran, 8/2)

Coronavirus cases are ticking back up in the U.S., but experts say it’s unlikely we’ll return to the era when COVID vaccine cards functioned like IDs to enter restaurants, see a show or board an international flight. So can we finally clean out our wallets and say sayonara to those little white cards? Here's what experts say. (Corey, 8/2)

Habitual nose picking is associated with an increased risk of contracting the coronavirus, researchers in the Netherlands found. A new study, published Wednesday in PLOS ONE, showed that nearly 85 percent of 219 health-care workers surveyed reported picking their noses with varying frequencies — monthly, weekly or daily. Of those, about 17 percent contracted the coronavirus, compared with about 6 percent of those who said they did not engage in the activity. The risk was relatively the same for all nose pickers, the researchers said, regardless of how often they did it. (Bever, 8/2)

A new device created by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis can detect SARS-CoV-2 in just one or two breaths and provide results in less than 1 minute. Study results are published in ACS Sensors. The test could be more accurate than at-home tests and faster than polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or swab-based tests, which can take at least 15 minutes to produce results. The device, created by 3D printers, was tested using eight participants (two negative for COVID-19, six positive as indicated by PCR testing), who breathed two, four, and eight times into a flexible tube. The breath test provided no false results, with accurate results obtained after two breaths for each participant. (Soucheray, 8/2)

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic boosted staffing in the nursing homes that took them, according to a new study in the medical journal JAMA Open Access. Nursing home staffing shortages are a long-standing problem that was only worsened by COVID-19. While the study does not say if the PPP loans — the majority of which were required to go toward staff pay — solved that shortage in nursing homes that used them, it did increase staffing hours. (Luterman, 8/2)

British biopharmaceutical giant GSK sued Pfizer in a U.S. court on Wednesday, alleging that Pfizer's respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine Abrysvo violates GSK's patent rights in its rival RSV shot Arexvy. In the lawsuit brought in federal court in Delaware, GSK said New York-based Pfizer's vaccine infringes four of its patents related to the antigen its shots use to fight the respiratory disease. (Brittain, 8/2)