Holidays didn’t lead to feared spike in flu cases, CDC says

NEW YORK >> New data from the US government suggests holiday gatherings have not triggered outbreaks of respiratory disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today that doctor’s office visits for flu-like illnesses have dropped 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 influenza and RSV first emerged in the fall, causing overcrowding in pediatric emergency rooms, some physicians feared that winter would bring a “tripledemic” of influenza, RSV and COVID-19[feminine]. And they feared holiday gatherings were the spark.

But that didn’t happen, apparently.

“Right now everything is still going downhill,” said Lynnette Brammer of the CDC, who leads the government agency’s flu tracker in the United States.

RSV hospitalizations have been down since November, and flu hospitalizations are also down.

Of course, the situation is uneven across the country, and some places have more disease than others. But some doctors say patient traffic is decreasing.

“It’s really eased off, significantly,” said Dr. Ethan Wiener, a pediatric emergency physician at NYU Langone’s Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital 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 significantly.”

Newland said he was not surprised that the flu and RSV have continued to decline in recent weeks, but added: “The question is what is COVID going to do?”

Hospitalizations related to COVID-19 increased through December, including during the week after Christmas. A data set from the CDC appears to show they began to decline after the New Year, although an agency spokeswoman noted that another tally indicates a slight increase since last week. Due to reporting delays, it may be a few weeks before the CDC can be sure COVID-19 hospitalizations have really started to drop, she said.

Newland said there was an increase in COVID-19 traffic at St. Louis Children’s in December. But he noted that the situation was nothing like it was a year ago, when the then-new omicron variant caused the largest national increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations since the start. of the pandemic.

“It was the worst,” he said.

The fall surge of RSV and influenza has been felt most intensely in children’s health care centers. Wiener said pediatric emergency department traffic in Hassenfeld was 50% above normal levels in October, November and December – “the highest volumes ever” for this time of year, he said. he declares.

The RSV and influenza outbreaks likely subsided because so many of the vulnerable population got infected “and it kind of burned out,” he said.

It makes sense that respiratory infections could rebound amid vacation travel and gatherings, and it’s unclear why that didn’t happen, Brammer said.

That said, flu season is not over. Thirty-six states are still reporting high or very high levels of influenza activity, and it’s still possible a second wave of illness is yet to come, experts said.