Flu Season Underway In RI, And The Numbers Aren’t Encouraging

RHODE ISLAND — Seasonal influenza cases are higher across the country than they’ve been at this time of the year in more than a decade, federal health officials said Friday. This underscores fears that Rhode Island will be overwhelmed by a “tripledemic” of flu, the respiratory illness known as RSV and COVID-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned the flu season, which runs between October and May and normally peaks in December and January, arrived earlier and harder this year than usual.

Nationwide, there's been 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, but is picking up along the Atlantic coast.

So far, Rhode Island's flu numbers have remained minimal, according to the CDC weekly surveillance report. But it likely won't stay that way for long. Flu is at higher levels in nearby states like Connecticut and New York, and is "high" in New York City and New Jersey.

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 state Department of Health reported 123.7 new cornavirus cases per 100,000 residents last week. There were also 112 hospitalizations and 10 deaths.

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.

“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.