Flu overtakes COVID-19 in U.S. as primary respiratory illness - The Globe and Mail

More people are falling seriously ill with the flu in the United States than with COVID-19, a demonstration of this year’s severe influenza season – but also of the waning seriousness of a pandemic that once brought the world to its knees.

Figures collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the weekly rate of hospitalizations for the flu has reached 5.9 per 100,000 people, a level not seen at this time of year in more than a decade.

For COVID-19, however, the rate has fallen to 4.3 per 100,000, far below the January high of 34.8. The figures for both the flu and COVID-19 are for the week ending Dec. 3, the most recent data available.

The dwindling severity of COVID-19 comes after President Joe Biden said in September that “the pandemic is over.”

Numbers of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have been on the rise in recent weeks, with nearly 5,000 daily hospital admissions. But for COVID-19 to qualify as a pandemic virus, “the threshold would be that it is still causing hospitals to be completely disrupted,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “And I don’t think COVID-19 has been doing that for some time.”

We have “ceased seeing hospitals being under siege by the virus,” he added.

COVID-19 measures brought the flu to standstill. Why experts say the coming season is unpredictable

Although COVID-19 is not as threatening as it once was, public health officials across the U.S. have expressed wariness of rising case counts, particularly as part of a “tri-demic” of COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) and the flu. Parts of the U.S. have warned about localized shortages of drugs to treat sick patients, including some antibiotics and pain relievers.

In California, some school districts and counties – including Los Angeles – have warned they may reinstitute mask mandates if the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients continues to increase. Nassau Community College in Uniondale, N.Y., plans to bring back a mask mandate next week.

Between influenza, RSV, rhinovirus and parainfluenza viruses, “you have six or seven different pathogens” of concern in the U.S. at the moment, said Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

“And masks help with that as well,” he said.

Epidemiologists in the U.S. continue to track the spread of new COVID-19 variants, including the XBB recombinant variant that has spread widely in places like Singapore, and has begun to become more visible in the U.S. Scientists say XBB is of concern because it seems to be more resistant to vaccines, although infected patients tend to experience relatively mild symptoms.

But overall, “it’s hard to say just yet whether this is going to be a major, significant wave or not,” Dr. Hotez said.

Unlike the past two winters, “we haven’t seen one subvariant really dominate,” he added.

Europe, whose waves of COVID-19 have typically preceded those in the U.S., has also seen a more muted winter wave this year.

“So it says to me that maybe this won’t be as bad as the past ones,” Dr. Hotez said.

That said, he added, “we don’t have a lot of experience with this new situation, where you have multiple variants within this wave.”

The decreasing severity of COVID-19 is a result of broad exposure to the virus and effective ways to treat it. A large percentage of the world’s population has now either been infected by COVID-19 or immunized against it.

In November, the World Health Organization reported a 90-per-cent drop in COVID-19 deaths, compared to nine months before. More than 70 per cent of the world’s population has now been vaccinated in some form.

New variants emerging today “are much easier to handle because of the immunity in the population,” Dr. Adalja said.

Treatments like Paxlovid, an antiviral medication authorized for use in the U.S. last year, have also proven effective. The Centers for Disease Control has reported that adults who take the oral medication are 50 per cent less likely to enter hospital with COVID-19.

Yet all of that comes as scant consolation to health care providers, for whom COVID-19 infections matter less than the total number of incoming patients, which has in some places reached new heights.

One hospital in Pomona, Calif. recently handled a record 382 emergency room visits in a single day and has set up a flu clinic in an auditorium, according to the Los Angeles Times. Other hospitals are reporting double their regular numbers of incoming patients.

Across the U.S., hospitals have reached capacity numbers not seen since this past January.

“It’s not like COVID-19 is the only game in town any more,” Peter Chin-Hong, a scholar of infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News. “You can get COVID-19, then you can get a cold or then you can get RSV, and then you get influenza.”

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Flu overtakes COVID-19 in U.S. as primary respiratory illness - The Globe and Mail
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