U.S. health officials have warned that respiratory virus activity is on the rise, with overall activity trending at moderate levels across the United States.
Influenza has risen about 5.1 percent week-over-week, according to the most recent update issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Dec. 20.
In a notice issued on Dec. 20, the CDC said that “emergency department visits with diagnosed RSV are high,” while hospital emergency room visits for influenza and COVID-19 are low nationally. However, officials have said that influenza cases are currently ticking upward in about a dozen states.
A data-based map published by the CDC also shows that the majority of states are at moderate levels for respiratory infections. Three states—Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Tennessee—are seeing high levels of infections, according to the map.
Around the United States, test positivity for influenza increased to 9 percent, COVID-19 “increased slightly” to 5.6 percent, and RSV positivity increased to 9.5 percent, the CDC said.
The agency separately said that seasonal flu activity is continuing to increase, while saying that COVID-19 is “predicted to increase” in the coming days.
For the flu, the virus has “been increasing at a pretty steady pace now for the past several weeks,” said CDC researcher Alicia Budd on Dec. 20. “We are certainly in flu season now,” she added.
Thirteen states reported high or very high levels of flu-like illness last week, about double from the week before. One is Tennessee, where a sickness spike is hitting the Nashville area, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.
“Flu has been increasing but just this last week has exploded,” Schaffner said. He noted that in a local clinic that serves as an indicator of illness trends, as many as a quarter of the patients have flu symptoms.
As of Dec. 10, according to the CDC, estimates show that flu virus infections are “growing or likely growing” in 39 states, and declining or likely declining in no states while remaining unchanged in two.
However, the most recent CDC data show COVID-19 hospitalizations have been declining since summer. COVID-19 activity is moderate nationally but high in the Midwest, according to CDC wastewater data.
“COVID-19 activity is beginning to increase from low levels in some areas of the nation,” the CDC said, adding that emergency visits and hospitalizations are still low.
Overall, RSV activity is moderate nationally “and continues to increase in most areas of the United States, particularly in young children,” the agency said.
The CDC called the start of flu season based on several indicators, including lab results for patients in hospitals and doctor’s offices, and the percentage of emergency department visits that had a discharge diagnosis of flu.
No flu strain seems to be dominant, and it’s too early in the season to know how good of a match the flu vaccine will be, Budd said.
On Dec. 20, the CDC released its outlook for the 2024-2025 respiratory virus season, predicting that there will be “a similar or lower number of combined peak hospitalizations due to COVID-19, influenza, and RSV compared to last season.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times