COVID and flu season: Will there be more flu cases in 2021?

Health experts warn of a ‘twindemia’ that could strike the United States this year as COVID-19 cases increase ahead of the next flu season.

Will there be a ‘twindemia’ this year?

Experts fear the coming winter will look like a typical flu season due to the return of students to school and the easing of mask mandates across the country, according to USA Today. It doesn’t help either, those social distancing rules have also been dropped.

And, most importantly, the next flu season comes as the new coronavirus continues to spread rapidly. Specifically, the delta variant of the coronavirus has been shown to be highly transmissible, spreading like wildfire across the country.

• “We were worried about ‘twindemia’ last year and we are facing the same threat this year,” Dr Daniel Solomon, physician in the infectious disease division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital told USA Today. “COVID-19 is likely to continue, and we face the threat of double respiratory viruses that could strain our healthcare system. “

Have there been a lot of flu cases in 2020?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 1,675 cases of the flu from Sept. 28 through May 22 for the entire United States.

• The United States has seen a record number of influenza cases due to COVID-19 measures, as I wrote for the Deseret News. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in January that the flu had all but disappeared from the United States because people were taking precautionary measures to say they were safe from COVID-19.

What happened in 2020 with the flu and COVID-19?

Infectious disease experts have expressed fear that the flu season and COVID-19 will create a “perfect storm” that will make millions of people sick.

Dr Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said last fall that there would be cases of both the flu and COVID-19, according to the Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

• “The big concern this year, of course, is that we’re going to see what could be a perfect storm of accelerated COVID-19 activity as people congregate more indoors, especially as they continually become tired with it. wearing a mask, social distancing and hand hygiene, and being exposed to seasonal flu, ”said Marrazzo.

Likewise, experts wrote in an editorial published in Science that the overlap could create massive stress.

• “A large portion of the population remains susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, and the stress on hospitals will be greatest if the COVID-19 and influenza epidemics overlap and peak at around the same time,” said they wrote.