COVID, Flu, or Flurona?
In 2020, the worst-case epidemiological doomsday scenario was a major influenza outbreak that would have occurred on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a “twin-demic” that would lead to catastrophe. That didn’t happen. Instead, while COVID raged, influenza was essentially non-existent.
Of the 1.3 million samples tested for flu between October 2020 and July 2021 and reported to the CDC, only 2,136 were infected with the flu and only 748 people of this group were coded as having died of influenza, according to CDC statis-tics. The previous year 38 million people in the entire country were estimated to have contracted the flu, of which 22,000 had died1. With the release of the Omicron bivalent vaccine in September 2022, the federal government and most of the rest of the U.S. states have, at least in a de facto sense, acknowledged that the country has entered the endemic phase of the pandemic. This will likely mean masking, social distancing, and other preventative measures will be widely abandoned, and could result in an increased number COVID and flu cases or deaths.
The good news is that as of this writing, the 2021-2022 flu season has gotten off to an equally mild start. As of Aug. 27, 2022, the CDC reported minimal number of cases in most of the U.S., with only New Mexico reporting “high” numbers. It is projected that cases will spike by the end of the year with 5% of patient visits for some form of an influenza like illness (ILI), well above the ~1% at the same time in 2021. The infection rate is still expected to be far below peak years in 2017-2018 and 2019-20202.
Is Multiplex Testing The Key To The Fight?
Multiplex testing offers labs a way to conclusively efficiently, and cost effectively diagnose patients presenting with symptoms that could be COVID or flu, cutting time to diagnosis and improving time to treatment.
