US CDC data has revealed that with COVID-19 taking
the world by storm in 2020, flu cases were low. This points to the fact that
covid is far more contagious than flu and is also less forgiving. More details
below!
Flu
cases and the year 2020
In 2019, from 19 September to 28 December (the flu
season), there were 65k cases of flu reported in the USA. However, during the
same flu period in the year 2020, there were only 1016 influenza cases
reported.
Thus, in 2020 when the coronavirus cases were high
with massive mortality rates, flu was incidentally low in numbers. What is the
reason for such low incidence and transmission of the disease?
The
causes of low influenza cases in 2020
The health experts feel that the reason for the low
incidence of flu cases this season of 2020 was that flu vaccination rates were
high. These helped to control the flu. Besides, for covid-19 people were forced
to wear face masks and follow social distancing at public places. There was
also the hand-washing protocol in place. Hence these preventive measures for
covid-19 spread also helped to keep flu cases low.
There was a 6-fold rise in the number of testing
done in labs for influenza A and B virus. This is because along with
coronavirus testing, flu testing was also simultaneously carried out. Thus one
can see that despite the high rate of testing, flu cases reported were less.
This flu testing lessened in the last quarter of 2020 since doctors were asking
for lesser flu tests since they realized that the cases were less. CDC spokesperson Kate Grusich stated:
“The public health labs test for more surveillance
purposes rather than patient care reasons and are therefore a better measure of
influenza burden each season than clinical labs,”
Dr Susan Rehm, vice-chair at the
Cleveland Clinic’s department of infectious diseases also feels that prior
vaccinations and infections of flu also helped to keep the flu incidence low
this season:
“COVID is a novel infection caused by the SARS coronavirus,
and no one has any innate immunity to it. So the population is probably overall
more susceptible to it than maybe to influenza.”
More flu vaccines were taken this
year because people were warned that a ‘twindemic’ of flu with covid-19 may
come in 2020. Covid has taught the world that respiratory virus can be
extremely bad and should not be taken lightly.
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| Flu and covid-19 [Source: ASM] |
Also, read Emotional exhaustion of covid-19 and how to avoid it?
What does all this mean?
Public health experts are happy
about the covid-19 safety measures helping in the control of flu. But covid-19 per
se was still high. This implies that covid is much more contagious and fatal
than flu. Dr. David Hooper, chief of the infection control unit at
Massachusetts General Hospital says:
“It says that it’s more contagious and that it’s less
forgiving of any lapses of these types of prevention measures,”
David feels that besides being more
contagious, the spread with coronavirus was more because there are people who
are shedding the virus and have no symptoms (Asymptomatic carriers). Besides
those who do develop coronavirus symptoms may be shedding the virus for many
days before they develop the symptoms. During this time of them shedding, they
are not picked up and continue to spread the virus. This is the dangerous part of
coronavirus infection from the public health point of view. Studies of models
developed by CDC researchers have shown that 59% of the coronavirus
transmissions were from such pre-symptomatic stages of the virus. 35% of these
were from pre-symptomatic people and 24% from totally asymptomatic people. And
in the case of flu, the viral shedding is only for a day before the symptoms
start. Hence there are fewer chances of unknowing spread of flu virus. But Susan
adds:
“Just because it’s been low so far doesn’t prove that it’s
going to be low going forward, and getting vaccinated is the best thing you can
do to prevent influenza. It’s not too late to get vaccinated for
influenza."
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