The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday in this week’s winter update that the rate of emergency department visits due to influenza is “very high” nationwide. respiratory virus season.
This season’s wave of influenza patients is will arrive later More so than the past two years. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual cold-season flu wave increased several weeks earlier than in many pre-pandemic seasons.
This year’s flu trends appear to be broadly consistent with the 2019-2020 season, which also reached peak levels around New Year’s.
Some of the states with the highest influenza levels are now in the West, with some already exceeding peaks recorded during last winter’s worst flu season.
In Oregon, 8.4% of emergency department visits were related to the flu at the end of December, according to CDC data. This is more than three times the peak reached last season.
“While we saw a significant spike in influenza cases in December 2022, this year’s numbers are significantly higher than last year,” Sarah Hotman, a spokeswoman for Oregon Health & Science University Hospital, said in an email. “There is,” he said. .
According to numbers Hotman shared with the hospital and other medical facilities in its system, there were 1,101 influenza cases treated in November and December 2024, compared to 251 in the same months in 2023. It increased from
The hospital’s daily tally of influenza patients is now the second highest after the record surge during the 2022-2023 season and the highest in recent years.
“In 2022, a combination of respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and COVID-19 caused a public health emergency in the region’s hospitals, putting health care standards at risk. We have not experienced it and we do not anticipate anything like that at this time,” Hotman said.
Experts also estimate that it is unlikely that a “triple epidemic” will occur again this year nationwide. This season’s flu wave comes as COVID-19 levels are only now accelerating in some parts of the country, weeks later than usual. There is.
The latest CDC modeling, released on Christmas, suggests that this winter’s coronavirus outbreak will be similar to previous winters, in part due to the absence of “new immune evasion variants” of the virus. It is expected that the outbreak will not be as large as the spread of infection.
The CDC finally estimated that most of the new coronavirus infections are caused by infectious agents. XEC variantOfficials said it is closely related to previous strains. The LP.8.1 strain, which is closely monitored by mutation trackers, still accounts for less than one in 10 cases.
The latest data from the CDC’s wastewater surveillance suggests that COVID-19 infection levels have only recently moved from a “moderate” to a “high” level nationwide. .
Virus concentrations in wastewater are among the worst across the Midwest, but are still well below the peak of last winter’s wave.
In the Midwest, Indiana has the highest rate of emergency department visits due to COVID-19, but it’s still a fraction of the rate of flu visits and below last winter’s peak.
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