America’s winter flu nightmare: Triple-threat of seasonal sickness, COVID and re-charged RSV to infect more people than ever as doctors warn ‘it’s going to be a new normal’
Doctors have warned Americans to prepare for a nightmarish winter that will feature a cocktail of seasonal illnesses including flu, COVID and re-charged RSV.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) projects that the winter respiratory season could lead to 100,000 hospitalizations this year.
The pandemic has reduced cases of seasonal flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but experts have said all three diseases are in full circulation this year.
The latest numbers from the CDC show that RSV infections and flu activity are on the rise as COVID hospitalizations appear to be on the rise.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, said WJ that this will likely be the ‘new normal’.
The pandemic had disrupted the spread of seasonal flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but all three are now circulating again
The CDC has developed two hypothetical scenarios for the season, which have illustrated how COVID during a moderate season will increase hospital demand and potentially lead to further strains.
This would far exceed a severe flu and RSV season before COVID started spreading around the world.
The CDC added that while they cannot predict the precise timing and impact of these three pathogens every season, these are two plausible scenarios for this year.
In the first scenario, the CDC combined a The peak for influenza and RSV last season with a moderate COVID-19 wave, but the peak of the three viruses for this year is staggered.
This scenario shows that the peak is higher than the level of a previous severe season of influenza and RSV combined.
In the other scenario, they again combined a peak for influenza and RSV in the past season with a moderate COVID-19 wave, but instead of spreading the peaks, they all happened at the same time.
In this case, the number of hospitalizations was similar to that of COVID hospitalizations in the 2022-2023 season, when the virus was rampant.
The CDC has developed two hypothetical scenarios for the season, which have illustrated how COVID will increase demand on hospitals during a moderate season
The CDC said high vaccination rates could significantly reduce hospitalizations.
Despite their own predictions, the CDC said it was difficult to predict the magnitude and timing of peak activity for each disease, as well as how the timing might overlap.
RSV is increasingly recognized as a cause of serious respiratory disease in older adults.
An estimated 60,000 to 160,000 RSV-associated hospitalizations and 6,000 to 10,000 RSV-associated deaths occur annually among adults aged 65 years and older.
Dr. Bill Messer, an infectious disease expert in Oregon, previously warned of the rising cases
While COVID isn’t killing people like it once did, it still remains the deadliest of the three — largely because it occurs year-round and is not season-specific.
“There is a social burden when the emergency room is full of people coughing and sneezing,” Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire, an immunologist and infectious disease expert at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told WSJ.
“Adding another virus to that pool could make that worse.”
‘There is another virus you can get. Your risk of getting sick has probably increased,” added Justin Lessler, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina.
Covid cases rose in eight states last week, according to CDC data.
And analyzes of wastewater indicate that infections are increasing nationally.
Meanwhile, COVID hospitalizations reached 16,000 the week of Nov. 11, up from nearly 15,000 the week before.
While this is well below the 24,000 recorded at the same time last year, CDC data also shows flu cases are increasing nationally and in seven states.
Vaccines have been made available for all three respiratory diseases for people six months and older, but uptake is not as high as experts had hoped
The common virus can be deadly for people with chronic conditions, killing up to 52,000 Americans every year.
The latest warning about flu season comes after Dr. Bill Messer, a molecular biologist in Oregon, warned that a “kind of triple threat” was coming.
He has urged people to consider face masks in busy locations and avoid touching their nose and mouth.
Messer also encouraged all Americans to get vaccinated against all three viruses.
Vaccines have been made available for all three respiratory diseases for people six months and older, but uptake has not been as high as experts had hoped.
The latest data shows that around 65 percent of adults have not yet had a flu shot, while the figure for children is around 70 percent.
Estimates suggest about 20 percent of U.S. adults have also signed up for the updated COVID vaccine that became available in September.
Only 14 percent of Americans over age 60 have had an RSV vaccine.