The wrath of the cold wave of this era influenza And COVID-19 It has yet to reach most of the country, as revealed by information through presentations from infection control and prevention facilities, which so far contains a fraction of the symptoms of the previous generation.
“COVID-19 activity remains low and stable in most areas. Seasonal influenza activity among children is increasing slightly, but remains low nationally,” the CDC said in its document. weekly report on information regarding both virus,
Company updates usually appear each time by Friday, but were not on time until later in the weekend due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Back to normal for the flu?
through this moment last yearInformation tracking outpatient visits to crisis rooms and doctor’s workplaces like playgrounds for the flu had already climbed above the company’s baseline for the season. actual record of this era suggestion of It is now easy for flu cases to reach that limit.
“We’re probably a little behind last year, and probably significantly later than last year, but those years have been unusually slow,” said Justin Lessler, a management expert and schoolmaster of epidemiology at the CDC-supported College of North Carolina. Were early.” network The problem of forecasters.
Lessler noted that the data from this era look “pretty close to what you would expect from a typical flu season before COVID-19.” pandemicWhen measures to contain the outbreak disrupted seasonal patterns of flu and other respiratory germs.
When compared with the closing era, allegations of weekly flu hospitalization are approximately 5 times less. Emergency room visits related to flu have spiked among school-age children, according to CDC data However, presentations today are less than a third of what they were in the previous generation.
A major problem that is affecting the statistics of this era is the immunity of people from the previous two waves of influenza, as well vaccination,
Epidemiologist Shawn said, “We have two fairly significant seasons, which may be the cause of this delay. Of course the question is whether this means we are going to have a delay, or a mild season. At this point. It’s really uncertain.” Truelove, activist scientist at the Society Fitness Faculty of Johns Hopkins College.
modeling Other experts on this era’s flu season make other guesses about what a country’s flu immunity might look like, as they try to play games about other scenarios about the likely form of this era’s flu season.
Truelove, who is also helping manage the CDC-funded Problem Forecasting Community, believes this period may mark a “return to normalcy” for the flu.
“That being said, the flu is never consistent. We get early seasons and late seasons. So it’s hard to say exactly what that means, and everything after the pandemic in terms of scale and timing.” A little weird,” Truelove noted.
On the lookout for every second COVID-19 tide
Many COVID-19 symptoms that the CDC tracks remain below those recorded today into 2023. This is a difference with previous summer waves of the virus, which subsided significantly in the autumn before the outbreak. Rise once again throughout the winter.
COVID-19 emergency room visit In almost all states there are “low” or “minimum”, later this era has ended. heat wave Of virus. range of viruses waste In this last era there are “lows” in all areas, rather than “high” ranges.
“Does that mean that enough immunity was built up in that heat wave that we won’t see a winter wave? Does that mean that a winter wave is going to come, but a little later and probably a little less,” Lessler noted.
Both Truelove and Lessler noted a major “data gap” that makes comparisons to previous seasons challenging, which is the omission of national COVID-19 hospitalization data throughout the summer surge.
A viral disease-era disaster requirement for health care providers to record COVID-19 hospitalizations that ended before this period, and only recently restarted Under a new rule issued by facilities for Medicare and Medicaid products and services.
The alternative factors distorting the data come with changes in how the crowd watches and searches for how COVID-19 infections are controlled.
Some other big unknown is the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. maximum circulating variants Currently there is a mixture of completely homogeneous variants like exe and KP.3.1.1.
“We don’t know, as we do for the flu, when it subsides, what the average speed of evolution of COVID away from our immune system will be,” Lessler noted.
Preliminary information released last month Researchers at Ohio University found that XEC appears to be more infectious when compared with the original variant it stocks upstream with KP.3.1.1, but not much more so than its siblings.
He said, “I really thought it’s calmed down a little bit after this year. We’ll see what I think after the season is over. But right now, I’m a little less convinced.”
microbes produce alternative respiration
COVID-19 and flu have remained at surprisingly low levels across the country for weeks, at least as rates of various germs spread through coughs and sneezes remain high.
CDC data Emergency room visits from the microorganism Mycoplasma pneumoniae, often called “walking pneumonia,” have increased in recent weeks. especially in infants,
Examples of the tide of pertussis of this era, or whooping coughThe increase also continues in many states across the country.
company counted up There were 577 pertussis infections nationally by the end of November 23, an increase of about 33% from the previous year. This exceeds the height of the documented pertussis tide of 2014, which reached 326 weekly infections reported last December.
Ohio currently has the most cases of pertussis, with 66 pertussis infections reported.
The CDC’s “severe respiratory illness” metric, which combines total categories of patients coming to emergency rooms with a wide range of cough and cold illnesses, including influenza and whooping cough, counts 14 states as having a “moderate” level, including Ohio. Does it.
