The Back Bay seems to be bearing the brunt of Boston’s summer Covid wave, though data suggests that spike could already be starting to ebb.

Cases of Covid-19 more than doubled in July compared to the month prior, with scores of new cases reported each day and a handful of resultant deaths. While expanded vaccination and lightened load on hospitals mean today’s spikes can’t compare to the worst of the pandemic, public health officials are still urging people to keep up to date on vaccinations and remain vigilant for symptoms.

The Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) designates the city’s current Covid level as “high” and trending downward. Wastewater concentrations, now Boston’s preferred way of measuring overall covid prevalence, sit at over 1000 RNA copies per milliliter, a concentration not seen in eight months.

Central Boston neighborhoods like the Downtown, Fenway and Back Bay have it particularly bad, sitting nearly 50% above the citywide average at a “very high” 1,500 copies/mL. That’s over double the reading of surrounding communities like Charlestown.

The city’s wastewater collection system doesn’t break its readings down further than that, meaning while the Back Bay testing station is probably also measuring surrounding neighborhoods to some degree of accuracy, it can’t speak definitively to anything but the spot it’s reading.

That’s still actually an improvement over the weeks prior, with a July 17 test hitting over 2,000 copies/mL. Like the rest of the city, the Back Bay station suggests Boston’s central neighborhoods are currently in the tail end of their summer spike.

What that surge hasn’t translated to, however, is a massive spike in hospitalizations. The rate of new admissions due to covid sits at around a dozen per day citywide, rising to around 15 at a couple points during the most recent spike, but still roughly equivalent to where it’s been since the surge in late winter. Emergency room visits have also remained steady, with intensive care unit capacity averaging a steady 90% and only reaching its limits four times during the height of the summer spike.

Testing rates remain low at around 200 per day even during the summer surge. That’s below the 500 per day seen during winter’s covid spike and far below the tidal wave of cases in early 2023, when daily counts reached almost 1,800.

That’s despite positive test rates today actually being above both of those spikes, recently reaching 33% positivity compared to around 20% for both of the last two winter surges. In combination with lower overall Covid rates, that suggests people are only really bothering to test when it’s already clear they have the illness.

All this comes after a very light spring, with wastewater indicators at 300 copies/mL throughout March, April and May. Spring averaged around 3 Covid hospitalizations per day and saw some days without a single admittance.

The BPHC is yet to take any drastic actions to address the surge. In a press release, they encouraged residents to keep an eye out for symptoms and stay up to date on both Covid and flu vaccinations, especially the elderly.

Whether anyone is following that advice is not measured, at least in the BPHC’s data. It stopped publishing vaccination reports back in February 2023.