Resources for covering the 2022-23 flu season
Image by Polina Tankilevitch: via pexels
It may seem to be a little bit like the boy who cried wolf, but community health officers are the moment again urging the general public to be anxious about a “twindemic” of COVID-19 and flu this coming winter season.
The reason: A mix of a challenging flu season in the southern hemisphere, the finish of pandemic social distancing and masking behaviors, and the possible for an additional SARS-CoV-2 variant, experts say.
“We ought to be nervous,” Richard Webby, Ph.D., an infectious disease expert at St. Jude Children’s Investigation Hospital advised NPR about this year’s approaching flu time. “I don’t necessarily believe it is operate-for-the-hills concerned. But we will need to be worried.”
Wellness reporters may well want to tune into the CDC’s annual flu briefing on Tuesday, Oct. 4 (This calendar year it will be on the net), where by two CDC and 3 health practitioner authorities will response the media’s queries about the flu. Stop by this webpage to register.
A critical flu period is notoriously tricky to forecast for the reason that the influenza virus mutates, but the southern hemisphere just wrapped up the most intense flu year since the pandemic commenced, suggesting the probability that a long-feared “twindemic” of equally flu and COVID-19 instances could emerge following two years of historically delicate flu seasons.
Generally, experts seem to what has happened in the southern hemisphere (it is winter season in the southern hemisphere when it is summer season in the northern hemisphere) to foretell what may perhaps materialize in Europe and the Americas for the duration of the winter season season.
In the meantime, there are stories from northern Europe that new COVID-19 scenarios and hospitalizations are mounting once more, and experts are carefully watching whether a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 may sweep the world as it did last winter. Typically, the U.S. has been a couple of months guiding Europe in the increase of new COVID-19 cases.
If the “twindemic” takes place this winter season, it would even further pressure the U.S. wellness program which is now less than duress from two and 50 percent yrs of COVID-19 reaction.
“Overall,” Helen Chu, Ph.D., M.P.H., a medical doctor and flu qualified at the College of Washington advised the Atlantic, “we are not properly organized.”
Do not individuals phrases audio familiar to all of us in the overall health care journalism industry?
To aid you with your reporting, examine out this idea sheet for reporting on the flu, current for the 2022-23 wintertime year.