High RSV Levels In Florida: Flu Season Off To Worrisome Start

FLORIDA — A respiratory virus that targets children is at its highest level in years across Florida, while seasonal influenza cases are higher than they’ve been at this time of the year in more than a decade in other states.

Federal health officials said Friday that underscores fears that hospitals in Florida will be hit with a “tripledemic” of flu, the respiratory illness known as RSV that targets kids and COVID-19.

The Florida Department of Health this week said RSV levels in Florida are higher than they've been in the past five years. The DOH said they are "notably above levels observed at this time in typical years."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned the flu season, which runs between October and May and normally peaks in December and January, has arrived unusually early and hard. Among 880,000 lab-confirmed cases so far this season, 6,900 people have been hospitalized and 360 people, including one child, have died.

Flu activity is the highest in the South and Southeast, and is picking up along the Atlantic coast; Florida is in the low range for flu spread, so far, according to the CDC weekly surveillance report, while RSV cases have soard in the Sunshine State.

The predominant strain of flu is influenza A(H3), the flu positivity rate and flu emergency room visits are increasing since the season began Oct. 2, the Florida Department of Health said.

Annual vaccination is the best way to protect yourself and others from potentially severe complications from flu, the department said. Flu shots take up to two weeks to become fully effective. To locate a vaccine near you, visit VaccineFinder.org.

Flu practically vanished over the past couple of years as people wore face masks and stayed out of crowded places to avoid COVID-19, which has killed more than 1 million people since early 2020. In the past week, 265,893 people in the United States have tested positive and 19,454 were hospitalized with COVID-19.

The CDC report comes as children’s hospitals across the country are seeing a rise in RSV cases. Cases of respiratory syncytial virus, as the common childhood illness is officially known, also plummeted during the first two years of the pandemic, but doctors now report an alarming increase in what is normally a fall and winter virus.

In Florida, 24 percent of those tested for RSV have been positive for the virus as of Oct. 22, the CDC said.

Currently, four of Florida’s five regions are in RSV season, said Florida health officials. Of special concern to Florida health-care providers is that the RSV season is longer here than the rest of the country and has distinct regional patterns.

“The data are ominous,” William Schaffner, medical director for the nonprofit National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a professor of infectious diseases at that Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told The Washington Post.

“Not only is flu early, it also looks very severe,” he said. “This is not just a preview of coming attractions. We’re already starting to see this movie. I would call it a scary movie.”

A couple of things are compounding the problem. Flu, COVID-19 and RSV all have similar symptoms, making laboratory tests the only way to erase doubt about which disease should be treated. Also, less than a quarter of Americans have gotten flu shots, according to CDC data.

“That makes me doubly worried,” Schaffner told The Post. The high burden of flu “certainly looks like the start of what could be the worst flu season in 13 years.”

He and other medical officials worry influenza numbers could rival the H1N1 swine flu pandemic of 2009, when 60.8 million people were sickened, including nearly 12,500 who died.

In Florida, COVID cases for the last three weeks are the lowest they've been since April. On Wednesday, the CDC COVID dashboard showed 10,150 confirmed cases for the past week, and 47.26 cases for every 100,000 residents.

A total of 7.15 million cases of COVID have been recorded in Florida, according to the New York Times, while a total of 82,176 Floridians have died from the disease.

Related: RSV Cases Rise In FL: 5 Things To Know About 'Tripledemic' Threat