NEW YORK – New US government data suggests holiday meetings haven’t sparked a spike in respiratory illnesses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that visits to doctor’s offices for flu-like illnesses fell for the sixth straight week. Reports of RSV, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be severe for infants and the elderly, are also declining.
When flu and RSV had risen sharply in the fall and led to overwork in the children’s emergency departments, some doctors feared that the winter would bring a ” tripledemic ” of influenza, RSV and COVID-19. And they feared holiday reunions might be the spark.
But apparently it didn’t happen.
“Right now things are getting worse,” said Lynnette Brammer of the CDC, which leads the government agency’s flu investigation in the United States.
RSV hospitalizations have decreased since November, and flu hospitalizations have also decreased.
Of course, the situation is uneven across the country, and some places have more diseases than others. However, some doctors say patient traffic is dwindling.
“It’s really relaxed a lot,” said Dr. Ethan Wiener, Emergency Department Pediatrician at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone in New York City.
dr Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious disease physician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri, said, “It’s slowed down tremendously.”
Newland said he wasn’t surprised flu and RSV continued to trend down in recent weeks, but added, “The question is what will COVID do?”
COVID-19 hospitalizations increased in December, including in the week after Christmas. A slew of CDC data appears to be showing that it started a downtrend after the New Year, although a spokeswoman for the agency noted that another count since last week is pointing to an uptrend. Because of reporting delays, it may be a few weeks before the CDC can be confident that COVID-19 hospitalizations have really declined, she said.
Newland said there was a spike in COVID-19 traffic at St. Louis Children’s in December. However, he noted that the situation was not what it was a year ago, when the then-new Omicron variant caused the largest national spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations since the pandemic began.
“That was the worst,” he said.
The fall of RSV and the flu epidemic were felt most strongly in children’s health centers. Wiener said traffic at the pediatric emergency room in Hassenfeld was 50% above normal levels in October, November and December – “the highest volume ever” for that time of year, he said.
The RSV and influenza outbreaks probably died down because so many members of the vulnerable population were infected, “and it just burned itself out,” he said.
It makes sense that respiratory infections could pick up during vacation trips and gatherings, and it’s not exactly clear why that hasn’t happened, Brammer said.
That means the flu season isn’t over yet. Thirty-six states are still reporting high or very high flu activity, and it’s always possible that a second wave of the disease is yet to come, experts said.
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