COVID emergency-room visits hit their lowest level on record in June, and the summer rise is starting from there

The share of American emergency-department visits diagnosed as COVID-19 fell to 0.09% on 12 June and touched that level three more times before the month ended, the lowest reading in the entire national series CDC has published since it began on 25 September 2022. The data come from the National Syndromic Surveillance Program, refreshed weekly, and run through 25 July.

A summer wave is now underway from that floor, as one has been in each of the past three years: the COVID share rose from 0.15% on 13 July to 0.23% on 25 July. But the base is unrecognisable. Averaging the same late-July days across years gives 0.94% in 2023, 2.24% in 2024, 0.73% in 2025 and 0.21% this year — 71% below last July and more than 90% below the July 2024 wave. Each year’s lowest reading has also fallen: 0.47%, then 0.32%, then 0.28%, and now 0.09%.

The proportional rise off the floor is not unusual — this year’s late-July average is 2.3 times the June minimum, against 2.0 in 2023 and 2.2 in 2025 — so the shape of the season looks ordinary. It is the level that does not. CDC does not publish whether emergency-department coding practice or the network of reporting facilities has changed over the four years, which is the main reason to treat the long-run comparison as indicative rather than exact.