What will be the magnitude of the maximum weekly rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations occurring in the United States between June 1 and October 5, 2024?

A new COVID variant is on the rise in the United States, variant KP.2, estimated at 28.2% of sequenced variants for the two-week period ending May 11, 2024, according to the CDC's variant proportions Nowcast. The KP.2 variant is one of a set of new variants nicknamed as the FLiRT variants after the F456L + R346T spike protein where this variant shows changes. The new variants have raised concerns of a potential summer COVID surge.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) closely monitors respiratory illnesses, particularly when these illnesses increase in prevalence during the winter. One monitoring and data sharing tool the CDC uses is RESP-NET, which it describes as follows:

The Respiratory Virus Hospitalization Surveillance Network (RESP-NET) comprises three networks that conduct population-based surveillance for laboratory-confirmed hospitalizations associated with COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and influenza among children and adults. While RESP-NET does not collect data on all hospitalizations caused by respiratory illnesses, it can describe hospitalizations caused by three viruses that account for a large proportion of these hospitalizations. Surveillance is conducted through a network of acute care hospitals in select counties or county equivalents in 12 states for RSV surveillance, 13 states for COVID-19 surveillance, and 14 states for influenza surveillance. The surveillance platforms for COVID-19, RSV, and influenza (known as COVID-NET, RSV-NET, and FluSurv-NET, respectively) cover more than 30 million people and include an estimated 8-10% of the U.S. population.

The underlying source data for the RESP-NET dashboard can be found at this link.