CDC updates the standing of the ‘tripledemic’ : NPR

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High U.S. well being officers right this moment warned that three harmful respiratory viruses are all spreading extensively now, threatening to disrupt the vacation season. NPR well being correspondent Rob Stein has the story.

ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Well being officers have been warning for months that the nation might be going through a tripledemic this winter with RSV, the flu and COVID all hitting on the identical time. It began with RSV, which got here roaring again unusually early this yr, hitting infants and different younger youngsters arduous. Then the flu began spreading early too, making much more children and their mother and father and grandparents sick. And now, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, informed reporters at a briefing that this yr’s influenza season is nicely underway with the flu spreading quick in no less than 47 jurisdictions.

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ROCHELLE WALENSKY: There has already been no less than 8.7 million sicknesses, 78,000 hospitalizations and 4,500 deaths from flu.

STEIN: Together with no less than 14 youngsters who’ve already died from the flu this yr. Hospitalizations from the flu are the best they have been this time of yr in a decade. And now, a brand new COVID surge seems to be erupting, throwing the third ingredient of a harmful respiratory trifecta into the combo. After percolating at a excessive plateau for months, the variety of folks catching COVID and getting so sick that they are ending up in a hospital has began rising once more.

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WALENSKY: Up to now week, we’ve got began to see the unlucky and anticipated rise of COVID-19 circumstances and hospitalizations nationally after the Thanksgiving vacation. This rise in circumstances and hospitalizations is particularly worrisome as we transfer into the winter months when extra individuals are assembling indoors with much less air flow and as we method the vacation season the place many are gathering with family members throughout a number of generations.

STEIN: The worry is that the nation’s beleaguered hospitals might get overwhelmed but once more.

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WALENSKY: We now face yet one more surge of sickness, one other second of overstretched capability and, actually, one in all tragic and sometimes preventable disappointment.

STEIN: Now, there are indicators that RSV could have peaked in some elements of the nation, such because the South and Southeast, and could also be leveling off within the Mid-Atlantic, New England and Midwest. However Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Affiliation fears many household gatherings might flip into superspreader occasions for all three viruses.

SANDRA FRYHOFER: Flu’s right here. It began early, and with COVID and RSV additionally circulating, it is an ideal storm for a horrible vacation season.

STEIN: So Walensky and Fryhofer are urging folks to do no matter they’ll to forestall all three viruses from spreading. That features washing arms, sporting masks, particularly round infants, older folks and different folks vulnerable to critical issues. They are saying it isn’t too late to get a flu shot and one of many new bivalent omicron boosters.

FRYHOFER: Keep dwelling while you’re sick. Share your love by not sharing your illness. This vacation season, please get vaccinated. It is one of the simplest ways to guard your self. It is one of the simplest ways to guard your family members. And it is one of the simplest ways to guard your neighborhood.

STEIN: This yr’s flu vaccine seems to be a superb match for the most typical strains which might be spreading. And whereas it stays unclear how a lot better the brand new boosters are than the unique vaccine, the photographs ought to no less than quickly assist bolster folks’s fading immunity. Rob Stein, NPR Information.

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