'Tripledemia' Rages On: Fever-Filled Weeks Ahead

RSV. probably peaked, but the flu continues to rise and Covid-19 cases are increasing. Scientists hope next winter will be better.

It's become a tiresome routine: Americans are embarking on a new season of vacation travel amid a viral attack.

New immune evasive versions of the Omicron variant are spreading, and Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rising again, although the numbers remain well below last winter's peak. But this year, the coronavirus has company: Common seasonal viruses, which have been low for the past two winters, have come back strong.

"And there turns out they have some makeup work to do,” said Peter Graven, who leads the office of advanced analytics at Oregon Health & Science University.

In particular, influenza and the R.S.V. virus, struck early and hard this fall, causing major outbreaks that now overlap with a resurgent coronavirus.This viral stacking - what some call a "triple epidemic" - has already sparked a exhausting sickness season, triggering skyrocketing demand for painkillers and fevers and pushing children's hospitals to the brink.

But each of these three viruses follows a trajectory slightly different.While there are considerable geographical variations, in most parts of the country, the R.S.V. has probably already peaked, while the flu is surging, experts say. And Covid continues to rise, with cases likely to continue to rise.

That means more difficult, fever-filled weeks ahead of us. "Lots of sniffling kids," said Andrew Lover, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences. "There's going to be a lot of respiratory disease from all these different sources."

It's not too late to get a Covid booster or a flu shot, which appears to match flu strains circulating this year, the scientists said. And experts repeated their now-common urgings to take basic precautions, like wearing masks in crowded indoor spaces, using rapid Covid tests before visiting vulnerable people, and staying home if unwell. /p>

"I know people are a little tired of hearing some of this stuff," Dr. Graven said. “We're not saying people have to change your life forever. Right now, for the next few weeks, we are not in a good situation.

Scientists hope next winter will be better, noting that this brutal season is an unfortunate, and not entirely unexpected, byproduct of several years pandemic precautions, such as masking and social distancing. These measures have protected many people from common winter infections and may have spared overburdened healthcare systems from even greater surges.

But many children and adults also missed the opportunity to build or strengthen their immune defenses against influenza and R.S.V., leaving the viruses with an unusually vulnerable population this fall. said Virginia Pitzer, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. "It's been a worse than normal winter, but one that hopefully won't happen again next year."

A viral comeback

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