What Effect Will Flu Season Have On CT Coronavirus Cases?

CONNECTICUT — With only one town left as a high-infection coronavirus red zone, Gov. Ned Lamont declared an "interim victory" over the coronavirus in Connecticut.

The governor was joined by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Gottlieb has regularly advised the governor throughout the pandemic, and has been a regular guest during his COVID-19 briefings.

Gottlieb said "the next round of COVID is going to look different," but said he didn't expect that bell to ring until the fall, at least. He is also anticipating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to call for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the oldest population in the fall as well.

The older population "is also the most at-risk population," Gottlieb said. "So you'd want them to go into the winter COVID season with as high a level of antibodies as possible."

That population is also the one for whom the most time has likely elapsed since their vaccination, as the elderly were prioritized in the state's age-based rollout of the vaccine.

"The very population whom you'd want to have maximum protection is the very population ... whose immunity may have fallen below the threshold you would consider acceptable."

Gottlieb said that by the fall the vaccines and vaccine booster shots would be available in the offices of primary care physicians. That's important, as the regular flu season may present a new risk, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Gottlieb.

"We're going to have the twin risk of COVID and influenza circulating at one point in the wintertime, in part because we haven't put a lot of flu into the population."

He said the "epidemiology of the flu spread could be a lot different this year, especially if there is a mismatch between the vaccine and the prevalent strain of influenza."

The fact that Connecticut residents are taking more precautions regarding the spread of respiratory disease after 15 months of COVID-19 could mitigate some of that risk, according to Gottlieb.

Dr. Albert Ko, co-chair of the Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group and chair of Yale University's Department of Epidemiology & Medicine, also joined Lamont during the news conference. He also expressed concern about the coming winter, anticipating "pockets" of low immunity throughout the state to begin making themselves known as the weather tuned colder.

"COVID is a very different beast from influenza," Ko said. "It is more transmissible, and it is 'super-spreading,' where 10-20 percent of the population is responsible for 80 percent of the transmission." Super-spreaders put "a little bit of a wrench" into the concept of herd immunity," he said.

Acting Department of Public Health Commissioner Dierdre Gifford said to ensure the long-term safety of the Connecticut residents, it was not only important that everyone in the state be vaccinated, but everyone overseas as well.

"The biggest risk we face as a country is that there are variants that could potentially break through our very excellent vaccines in the United States."

Gifford said the state is currently fine-tuning its COVID-19 tracking processes to ensure DPH knows exactly how many of what kind of variants are present in the state.

"We'll have a much better sense going forward, when that system is in place, of the percentage of our positive tests are variants and what type of variants they are,"Gifford said.