Last week, we had some encouraging COVID wastewater concentration data for D.C. and neighboring Alexandria, VA. A large decline from the week prior, and an end to many weeks of 10-35% weekly increases. Which is good! That said, I noted:

While the weather will remain nice for the next month or two, schools are back in session (both K-12 and colleges), so I think we’ll see increases over the next few weeks (though I hope I’m wrong).

While we didn’t see an increase, we didn’t see significant declines either. Here’s D.C.:

And here’s Alexandria, VA:

While I hope this is simply a delay in the downward trend and not the start of another upward trend, I can’t really imagine a mechanism for that, unless far more people have been infected recently than the data suggest. In addition, it looks like New York is being overrun by COVID, and, historically, D.C. has seen surges shortly thereafter. So I’m still predicting a surge.

Happy fucking Thursday.