{"id":988,"date":"2021-01-07T10:07:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T15:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=988"},"modified":"2021-01-07T10:07:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T15:07:07","slug":"are-flu-rates-still-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"Are flu rates still low?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Question:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0I haven’t heard much about flu season recently.\u00a0 I remember that it was mild in the Southern Hemisphere.\u00a0 Is that the case for the Northern Hemisphere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>We last talked about influenza in our Q&A of 10\/21<\/a>, finding that seasonal influenza rates were low.\u00a0 Approximately 2.5 months later, influenza rates remain low.\u00a0 In this week’s influenza report,\u00a0CDC states<\/a> that flu activity in the US is “lower than usual for this time of year.”\u00a0 For week 52 (ending December 26th), 36,953 specimens were tested<\/a> across the country, of which 76 (0.2%) were positive.\u00a0 As you can see in Figure 1<\/strong>, only one state has moderate flu activity, Mississippi.\u00a0 CDC also reports<\/a> that “A total of 101 laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations occurring between October 1, 2020 and December 26, 2020 were reported by FluSurv-NET sites. This number is lower than average for this point in the season and comparable to counts seen at this point during the 2011-12 season.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A number of studies have been published around the world examining influenza activity during the pandemic.\u00a0 Evidence continues to accumulate that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)– mask wearing, distancing, hand washing– are highly correlated with lower influenza rates (a few examples\u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>).\u00a0 One could also hypothesize that testing for influenza has been limited due to the pandemic, but even in Australia<\/a> where flu testing increased in 2020 compared with previous years, influenza was much lower than previous seasons.\u00a0 One could also hypothesize that increased influenza\u00a0vaccination has tamped down influenza rates.\u00a0 CDC reports that\u00a0192.3 million doses<\/a> of influenza vaccine were distributed across the country as of 12\/25, which is 17.8 million doses more than the 2019-20 flu season.\u00a0 However, a recent MMWR<\/em> report<\/a> found that\u00a0“early-season data do not indicate substantial differences in intended influenza vaccination behavior during the 2020\u201321 influenza season compared with other recent seasons.”\u00a0 One positive of all the behavior change because of the pandemic is that influenza and other respiratory infections have become far more rare.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1. Influenza Map, December 26th<\/strong>\u00a0(from CDC<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question:\u00a0I haven’t heard much about flu season recently.\u00a0 I remember that it was mild in the Southern Hemisphere.\u00a0 Is that the case for the Northern Hemisphere? Answer:\u00a0We last talked about influenza in our Q&A of 10\/21, finding that seasonal influenza rates were low.\u00a0 Approximately 2.5 months later, influenza rates remain low.\u00a0 In this week’s influenza […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,46,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-influenza","category-trends","category-vaccines","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/image-1.png?fit=1645%2C1120&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":990,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}