From an infectious disease expert's perspective, California has had anything but an ideal summer. Unrelenting COVID-19 levels have pummeled the region over the past several months, and wastewater data suggests that the virus still has a stranglehold on the Golden State.

Earlier this summer, experts warned that this year's surge was particularly unusual for a number of reasons. For one, in previous years, cases peaked around July and August or even September before quickly nose-diving. In 2024, however, wastewater concentrations started to rise in late April as opposed to late June and don't show any signs of breaking just yet.

Multiple Bay Area regions -- including San Francisco, Redwood City and Novato -- are currently experiencing "medium" COVID levels, wastewater data shows. The California Department of Public Health data indicates that the state has a test positivity rate over 13% -- slightly above the winter surge of January 2024.

"SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in 100% of samples collected over the last 3 weeks," Amanda Bidwell, a wastewater researcher and Stanford data analyst, told SFGATE via email.

"In August 2024, wastewater concentrations for SARS-CoV-2 at these CA sites are higher than where they were this time last year and almost as high during the winter peak earlier this year," she continued. Ultimately, the data shows that the state is still in the middle of a summer surge, Bidwell wrote.

But Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UCSF, told SFGATE that she anticipates a brief pause in cases, mainly because so many people will have acquired temporary immunity by either getting sick or vaccinated. Though the new COVID variants like KP.3, KP.2 and KP.1.1 are a bit more "slippery" and highly transmissible, she says that COVID case rates seem to finally be improving.

"Luckily, they're starting to come down now, because we really did have a pretty severe summer surge in California," Gandhi told SFGATE over the phone.

So far, though, only 15% of the state's population has received an updated vaccine, CDPH data shows. To stay protected, Gandhi recommends that immunocompromised individuals look into receiving monoclonal antibodies. The new vaccine, which directly targets the latest variants, has also been approved under emergency use authorization and is recommended for anyone 6 months or older.