Doctors are reporting an increase in COVID cases, and they say this is just the beginning of what could be worse than a bad flu season.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the amount of coronavirus seen in wastewater, the number of people testing positive for the virus and the number of people showing up at emergency rooms started increasing in July.

People on the streets of New Haven are masking up. Doctors say the Omicron variant is ramping up after six or seven months of steady declines.

"It's been a little bit off the radar for some people I think, and they're going back to their new normal," said Dr. Jessica Tuan with the Yale School of Medicine.

She says there were 32 hospitalizations in Connecticut a day by the end of last month, a 14% increase from the previous two weeks.

"Your immune response can decrease after a COVID-19 vaccination or an episode of COVID-19, so therefore I think it's really important to be up to date on your COVID-19 vaccine and our booster," says Tuan, who investigated the COVID vaccine for Pfizer.

The World Health Organization says almost a million new cases of COVID-19 were reported globally from mid-June to mid-July.

Tuan says the biggest increase in cases has been among seniors stressing the importance of vaccines.

"There's constant discussions about the need for boosters and the timing based on the durability of the vaccines and the evolving variants," says Tuan.

Scientists and doctors are expecting significant cases coming this fall and winter, and the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve a new vaccine to battle the virus in September.

Doctors say there is a subvariant of Omicron that is evolving in the United Kingdom.