Flu activity and hospitalizations are skyrocketing to levels not seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting public health officials and emergency room physicians to issue public calls this week for Californians to stay safe. get vaccinated.
It’s a major change from the past two years, when stay-at-home orders and mask mandates suppressed flu transmission so low in the Sacramento area that the UC Davis Medical Center did not admit a patient with the disease in the 2020-21 flu season.
“We’ve benefited over the past two years from all the masking and distancing we’ve had,” said Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Health. “There are normally between 100 and 200 pediatric deaths in the United States each flu season. In 2020-2021, there was one pediatric death in the United States.
It wasn’t just children who benefited, however, according to death certificates reviewed by the California Department of Health. The agency reported that flu deaths among people aged 65 and older fell 73% in the 2021-22 flu season compared to 2018-19, the last flu season before the pandemic hit. COVID-19.
There were 355 flu deaths in California that year, more than triple the 96 reported last season.
The raw number of flu deaths for all age groups shows a surprising drop last season, compared to 2018-2019: deaths fell to 23 compared to 141 for adults aged 50-64, at 29 against 99 among 18 to 49 year olds, and three from 17 years old for minors.
California epidemiologist Erica Pan, a pediatric infectious disease physician, noted that “there was just less flu circulating, fewer flu hospitalizations, and then fewer deaths during the pandemic. It was quite dramatic.”
While the number of flu deaths was even lower before the end of the stay-at-home order in June 2021, data from last season shows indoor mask mandates, new home tests COVID-19, as well as age-old, common-sense measures like handwashing, could also improve mortality statistics.
Granted, people were traveling even less last season and having more outdoor gatherings, Pan said, and all of that likely contributed to lower flu deaths as well.
“There are basically dozens of respiratory viruses circulating in the winter,” Pan said, “and for most of them, a lot of things we’ve done, and a lot we can continue to do really help prevent the transmission of these respiratory viruses.”
Increase in flu cases in the Sacramento area
With flu-related hospitalizations increasing earlier in the season than usual, emergency room physicians at Sacramento-based Sutter Health called a news conference Thursday to highlight their concerns and encourage residents to take precautions during holiday gatherings this month. They urged the public to get vaccinated against both the flu and COVID-19 to help prevent a resurgence of disease.
Winter transmission of the virus has exploded Following recent Thanksgiving family gatherings pushing many California hospitals to their limits, so in addition to advocating for vaccinations, Drs. Vincent Tamariz and Arthur Jey of Sutter Health urged Californians to take a few more steps to prevent this from happening again after the December festivities.
Tamariz, pediatric medical director at Sutter’s California Pacific Medical Center Van Ness Campus in San Francisco, advises parents to exercise caution with their infants to avoid the spread of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus. The disease has put many children in hospital and resulted in four lab-confirmed deaths of California children under age 5 this flu season.
“I can’t tell you how many 4 month olds I’ve seen who were visited by their cousins four days before or five days before for a family event, wedding or something like that” , Tamariz said. “And now this 4-month-old has RSV, which could be a much more serious thing, compared to a 1- or 2-year-old with RSV.”
Jey, an emergency physician at several Sutter hospitals in northern California, recommended people over the age of 2 continue to “mask up” when meeting over the holidays.
Blumberg echoed that sentiment “Hopefully masking could be an important and positive legacy of the COVID pandemic. … I had a respiratory tract infection for the past three years. I see kids all the time, I’m like, in their faces, interacting with them, examining them. So I was very happy not to get sick in the last three years with all these restrictions in place.
California doctors recommend wearing a mask this winter
If you think about it, Pan said, what have doctors done for decades when they know they’re treating a patient with a respiratory disease? They don’t wear a mask, she said, because they know it can protect them, their medical team and their families from getting sick.
If you travel in airports or on planes, Pan said, wear a mask to make sure you don’t catch any viruses and bring them to your loved ones. It’s about managing your risk of exposure, she said.
If children end up in hospitals with a respiratory illness, Jey and Tamariz said, parents should know they can be transferred to another facility that can provide the level of care they need. Not all hospitals have the expertise to treat severe cases of RSV, doctors said, so children will likely need to go to a pediatric intensive care unit like those at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento or of the CPMC Van Ness campus.
In addition, Sacramento-area health systems are also communicating with each other and with the Sacramento County Public Health team to facilitate transfers and ensure patients receive the treatment they need, Blumberg noted.
With all the mask mandates gone, Blumberg said, he and other infectious disease experts expect the 2022-23 flu season to be just as deadly as it was in the years before. pandemic.
“Many people don’t realize that the flu causes about 20,000 to 30,000 deaths each year in the United States,” he said, “and even people who we don’t traditionally consider to be at risk for serious illness , like children, die.” of this one.”
Cathie Anderson covers health care for The Bee. Growing up, her blue-collar parents paid for care out of their own pockets. She joined The Bee in 2002, with roles including business columnist and editor. She previously worked at newspapers such as Dallas Morning News, Detroit News and Austin American-Statesman.
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