As the world focuses on COVID-19, influenza – another contagious respiratory disease caused by a virus – appears to have all but disappeared.
Flu activity is “abnormally low” for this time of year, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest weekly flu surveillance report in the United States.
“The CDC is being modest – the flu is at record levels,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, to TODAY.
“The flu virus is not circulating in our population in the normal way.”
He and his colleagues have been conducting flu surveillance since the 1990s and have never seen disease levels so low, Schaffner noted.
Flu activity is “significantly low,” added Dr. Nisa Maruthur, a primary care physician and associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
About 136 people were hospitalized for influenza between October 1, 2020 and January 16, 2021, and there were 292 influenza deaths during that period, the CDC reported. A child died.
The flu season is far from over – it usually starts in the fall and peaks between December and February.
But by comparison, 400,000 people were hospitalized for the flu and 22,000 died, including 434 children, during the entire 2019-2020 season, which the CDC described as “severe” for children aged 4 and under, and for adults 18 to 49 years old.
Flu activity maps look very different for the same week in January 2020, compared to 2021, with most states reporting minimal activity this year:
In 2020, high or very high flu activity dominated the map:
The change is not surprising, as the flu virus spreads through respiratory droplets, similar to the new coronavirus, and people are wearing masks, distancing themselves socially and paying attention to hand hygiene to avoid COVID-19, he said. Dr. Waleed Javaid, director of infection prevention and control at Mount Sinai Downtown in New York.
“There are fewer people outside the home, and we hope that people are less likely to leave if they are symptomatic,” added Maruthur. “In normal years, people who are symptomatic usually don’t feel the same need to stay home.”
But the biggest contributor has to do with children, who are often the “big driver of flu” for flu, noted Schaffner. Children are very contagious because they produce more flu viruses than adults and spread it over longer periods.
But during the coronavirus epidemic, many children are learning at home or wearing masks and social detachment at school.
“Children are not being infected and they do not bring the virus to their elders,” said Schaffner.
It is the reason why he thinks that the incredibly low flu activity during the coronavirus crisis will not be repeated in the coming years.
Still, wearing masks can survive the epidemic, especially since it became familiar to people last year, said Javaid
“Would it be a best practice in winter to wear a mask? I am inclined to say yes, ”he noted. “I think we should seriously consider using masks to reduce the intensity of flu seasons.”
This could reduce hospitalizations and flu deaths in the coming years, but there will be no impact if only a few Americans continue to wear masks and maintain social distance in future flu seasons, experts said.
Some people are already declaring that they will keep the mask habit, since they have not sniffed or any other symptom of cold and flu since the beginning of the coronavirus.
Other lessons learned are that physical detachment, getting the flu shot and staying at home if you are symptomatic are also very effective, added Maruthur. More than 193 million doses of the flu vaccine have been distributed by mid-January, the CDC said.
“We are all used to seeing people wearing masks now – nothing much. I think we can see a lot more of that and more cautious behavior during the flu season, ”noted Schaffner.
“Wear your masks, social distance – do that sort of thing annually. I think we will see much more of that message because it is now more socially acceptable and familiar to many people ”.
Does a milder-than-normal flu season so far this year mean that the next one will be more problematic? The flu is “very peculiar”, so there is no way to predict what will happen in 2022, said NBC News medical correspondent Dr. John Torres. The main message is to get the flu shot in the fall, and still get one now, if you haven’t already, if flu activity starts to increase in the coming weeks.
