What is happening to the flu disease?
Doctors explain impact of COVID precautions in California, USA.
An expert physician with Kaiser Permanente says by 2020 January, California would normally see a serious uptick in flu cases, but not this year 2021 January.
Calkfornia news |Doctors Gang|
Amid a deepening COVID pandemic situation, physician and genarel population are crediting masking, hand washing and distancing with each other people which are stopping one virulent disease in this tracks such as the flu.
The Gold lining is were not seeing the flu diseasesn in 2021. The flu is almost absent in 2021,” said a physician Dr. Andra Blomkalns, Director of Emergency Medicine for Stanford Health(EMSH).
California news covid update
“There is no question this year is an extraordinary year 2021,” said Dr Kaiser Permanente flu specialist Dr. Randy Bergen, who saod ABC7 News that by early January(2020), California(CA) would normally see a serious uptick in flu cases, but not this year(2021).
We are testing still thousands of Patients in our emergency service room settings and in our hospitals and clinic for a combination of Corona virus disease (COVID) and flu tests and we are essentially seeing no flu disease in this year 2021. Some weeks we will have no flu cases, other we will have maybe one or two flu cases.”
Some physician say all the precautions taken to prevention of the spread of COVID-19 are preventing flu cases at bay. But if they are so effective with a virus, why not the other virus?
“It is a great question,” told Stanford global health professor Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who explained some of the answer may lie in pre coronavirus studies or research in recent years that revealed an odd sort of competition among viruses.
“It could be something about an infection with a virus may somehow reduce the risk of infection with other virus,” said Dr Maldonado.
Now whether it is immunity(disease prevention power) of the people. or they(immunity) just inhibit or suppress the growth of another virus jn the body , it is not really clear now , but there is certainly an inkling from a couple of years ago, that viruses can compete with other virus.”
California news covid update
Another contributing factor
1. many more people received flu vaccines last year 2020.
2. many children are not going in school, and are not gathering with friends nearly as often as they would normally.
3. Flu always starts in the schools. It begins with children/neonate,” said expert Bergen.
Experts caution people of USA not to let their guard down. There is still plenty of time in this winter for the flu disease to make a comeback again 2021.
