Brace Yourself for a Triple Wave of Seasonal Viruses

The same thing happens every year. People gather inside when it gets cold. The windows are not open. Commuters prefer packed buses and subways to walk or cycle. Our breath can be seen on the windows of homes, offices, schools, and transport, showing how well we have kept ourselves out of harm's way. The perfect breeding ground for Viruses is created by us.

The respiratory virus season is predictable. Hospitals in the northern hemisphere begin to admit patients with respiratory syncytial virus in October. Thousands of people get ill and many die, but the health systems in Europe and North America aren't usually at risk of being overwhelmed.

This predictability has been disrupted by the swine flu. The flu is returning this year with a vengeance because it has been added to the seasonal mix. A "twin" or even a "Tripledemic" could be on the way, with all three Viruses hitting at the same time, illnesses soaring, and health systems creaking under the pressure. There are signs that this is going to happen.

Many hospitals in the US are at capacity, caring for large numbers of children who are sick with Viruses, many more than would be expected at this time of year Hospitals across the country have been reporting peak levels of patients in December and January because the CDC doesn't track cases of the respiratory syncytial virus. Over the course of a month, the number of tests that came back positive has doubled. The higher the proportion of tests that come back positive, the more common it is. Three percent of tests came back positive in October in the three years before the Pandemic.

This is a bad memory from the Pandemic. People took precautions against the coronaviruses, such as wearing a mask and washing their hands. The weekly positivity rate for RSV tests remained below 1 percent between the beginning of the Pandemic and March 2021.

In July of this year, health specialists warned that the benefits of these precautions could end up having a negative effect on the winter. Experts argued that reducing exposure to common endemic viruses risked creating an immunity gap in people who hadn't previously built up enough immunity against these viruses.

Children are catching these viruses for the first time, without having built up any immunity, and falling sick, as predicted. Rachel Baker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University in Rhode Island, was one of the authors of a comment piece on the topic. Hospitals are being put under pressure by that.