Holidays didn't lead to feared bump in flu cases, CDC says

Holidays didn't lead to feared bump in flu
cases, CDC says

January 14 2023, by Mike Stobbe

A patient is given a flu vaccine at the L.A. Care and Blue Shield of California
Promise Health Plans' Community Resource Center where they were offering
members and the public free flu and COVID-19 vaccines Friday, Oct. 28, 2022,
in Lynwood, Calif. Doctors tend to worry that holiday gatherings can spark new
surges in infectious diseases like the flu. But new government data suggests that
didn't happen this year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on
Friday, Jan. 13, 2023 reported that flu has continued to wane this month. Credit:
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File

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New U.S. government data suggests holiday gatherings didn't spark
surges in respiratory diseases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday reported that
visits to doctors' offices for the flu-like illnesses fell for the sixth straight
week. Reports of RSV, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can
be serious for infants and the elderly, are also down.

When flu and RSV surged in the fall, causing overloads at pediatric
emergency rooms, some doctors feared that winter might bring a "
tripledemic " of flu, RSV and COVID-19. And they worried holiday
gatherings might be the spark.

But it didn't happen, apparently.

"Right now, everything continues to decline," said the CDC's Lynnette
Brammer, who leads the government agency's tracking of flu in the
United States.

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

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

"It has really eased up, considerably," said Dr. Ethan Wiener, a pediatric
ER doctor at the Hassenfeld Children's Hospital at NYU Langone in
New York City.

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People shop during Black Friday in New York on Friday, Nov. 25, 2022.
Doctors tend to worry that holiday gatherings can spark new surges in infectious
diseases like the flu. But new government data suggests that didn't happen this
year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday, Jan. 13, 2023
reported that flu has continued to wane this month.Credit: AP Photo/Julia
Nikhinson, File

Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at St. Louis
Children's Hospital in Missouri, said "it has slowed down,
tremendously,"

Newland said he wasn't surprised that flu and RSV continued to trend
down in recent weeks, but added: "The question is what was COVID
going to do?"

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COVID-19 hospitalizations rose through December, including during the
week after Christmas. One set of CDC data appears to show they started
trending down after New Year's, although an agency spokeswoman
noted that another count indicates an uptick as of last week. Because of
reporting lags it may be a few weeks until CDC can be sure COVID-19
hospitalizations have really started dropping, she said.

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

"That was the worst," he said.

The fall RSV and flu surge was felt most acutely at health care centers
for children. Wiener said the pediatric emergency department traffic at
Hassenfeld was 50% above normal levels in October, November and
December—"the highest volumes ever" for that time of year, he said.

The RSV and flu surges likely faded because so many members of the
vulnerable population were infected "and it just kind of burnt itself out,"
he said.

It makes sense that respiratory infections could rebound amid holiday
travel and gatherings, and it's not exactly clear why that didn't happen,
Brammer said.

That said, flu season isn't over. Thirty-six states are still reporting high or
very high levels of flu activity, and it's always possible that a second
wave of illnesses is still ahead, experts said.

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not

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