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With flu season fast approaching in the United States, many are beginning to wonder if and how our healthcare system will deal with the next few months. The coronavirus has stretched hospital resources thin over the past 8 months, and the next few months make a “twindemic” between the seasonal flu and COVID potentially devastating.
In particularly bad flu seasons (ex: 2017 - 2018 and the 2018 - 2019 flu seasons), hospitals have a hard time keeping up with the demand for treatment. Oftentimes, as is true with the coronavirus, patients require access to hospital resources like respirators in order to survive. In 2017, for example, there were 810,000 hospitalizations and 61,000 due to the flu (CDC). The coronavirus pandemic, which has extended for many months now, has seen 100s of thousands of hospitalizations and more than 1 million deaths worldwide (as of 10/11/2020).
A bad flu season combined with a resurgence in COVID cases would place incredible strain on the U.S. Fortunately, current predictions indicate that this year’s flu season will be mild. Nations residing in the Southern Hemisphere of the planet (ex: Australia) experience an inverted cycle of seasons. As such, these nations have already undergone their flu season, providing those of us living in the Northern hemisphere with a prototype of how things might be in a twindemic.
In August of this year (August is the peak of the flu season in Australia), Australian labs reported 121 cases of the flu. In August of 2019, Australian labs reported 61,000 flu cases. This massive reduction in case numbers indicates that we may have a much lighter flu season here in the States as well. While differences in things like climate and public safety measures (ex: social distancing) are definitely different between the two nations, Australia’s success with keeping flu cases down bodes well for the U.S.
Thankfully, the flu vaccine is available across the nation. Under most insurance plans, the vaccine is free of charge, so it’s a no-brainer to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Doing so will decrease your chances of contracting the flu and should go a long way towards protecting you against that aspect of the coming “twindemic.”
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