One year after a winter that featured the worst peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials are concerned rising cases and a worse influenza season could strain hospital resources.
U.S. flu season ocurrs in the fall and winter, peaking December-February, the same time period in which record-high cases of COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals across Arkansas and the country last winter.
At that same time, Arkansas experienced flu numbers far below previous years’. Throughout most of the 2020-21 flu season, the percentage of outpatient hospital visits in Arkansas for influenza-like illness (ILI) hovered around the off-season baseline, according to ADH data. Throughout the past five years, that rate has averaged a peak of more than 6% in mid-February, but in February 2021 it was at the off-season baseline level of less than 1%.
This was likely because fewer students were in school and more people were staying home and masking up in public, said Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, ADH chief medical officer and medical director for immunizations and outbreak response. Uncharacteristic flu spikes in spring and summer 2021, when mask requirements were lifting and more people returning to their normal lives, support this hypothesis, Dilaha said.
But this year, with mask mandates nearly nonexistent and thousands more children in school, hospital visits for ILI and school absentee rates are on the rise. Both measures, which can help indicate the extent of seasonal respiratory virus spread, are meeting or exceeding past years’ averages most weeks.
“(The) average, you know, that kind of varies from year to year,” Dillaha said. “But we’ll have a real flu season this year, as opposed to last year.”
With COVID-19 cases also on the rise — active cases in Arkansas have risen 51% since hitting a trough Nov. 9 — Dillaha worries that coronavirus, flu, and other seasonal viruses like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), could put many Arkansans in the hospital once again, she said.
“It would definitely add to increased stress on our hospital systems,” Dillaha said. “And that is one of my concerns for this winter. A lower number of COVID cases, but influenza could potentially make up the difference in a high level of hospitalizations again. We know that the flu puts a lot of people in the hospital.”
Dillaha will be watching pediatric respiratory illness caseloads especially closely, she said. The delta variant of the coronavirus affects children more severely than any previous variant. Children are also the group most likely to get severely ill from RSV, and along with the elderly are the group most impacted by severe flu, Dillaha said.
“Flu and RSV and COVID in children, the main hospital that would be taking care of them is Arkansas Children’s,” DIllaha said. “And we have limited capacity for handling small pediatric cases, small children in Arkansas. Fortunately, the severe COVID cases are a little bit older. But even if the hospital is full of flu and RSV, then it does present a problem for small children who need the specialty care or being put on the ventilator.”
Dr. Jessica Snowden, division chief for pediatric infectious diseases at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, said the past year and ½ of the pandemic has shown the hospital’s doctors, nurses and staff they can adapt to anything, and they are prepared for surging hospitalizations they might face this winter. The team is staying vigilant and preparing contingency plans, expecting to see more flu admissions during the season’s peak. she said. Meanwhile, baseline COVID-19 admissions are still higher than they were before the delta surge.
“So far, knock on wood, we aren’t seeing a ton of flu, but we are seeing a lot of other viral illnesses co-infected with COVID-19 that make kids much more sick than either one alone do. Like RSV or like human metapneumovirus…which is an RSV-like virus. And so we’re seeing a lot of really significant respiratory ailments, because they’ve got both of them at the same time. And it speaks to the importance of making sure we’re protecting from everything that we can.”
Dr. Amanda Novack is the medical director of infection prevention at Baptist Health, the state’s largest healthcare system. Novack said Baptist’s locations had almost no flu admissions last winter, although COVID-19 hit the system hard. She and her team are anticipating more flu hospitalizations this year.
“This pandemic has taught a lot of humility, and nobody knows the future,” Novack said. “But I think we would be foolish to not be prepared for a possible surge. Even if COVID is under control, you know, without anyone being exposed to flu last year, that kind of background immunity that every flu season adds to the community, we didn’t have that.”
Like Snowden, Novack feels confident her home-base hospital in Little Rock, stocked with ample ventilators and with several difficult COVID surges under its belt, is prepared for the winter.
Still, an influx of severely ill patients would be hard on a staff already exhausted from the pandemic and stretched thin by a nursing shortage affecting the entire U.S., she said. Novack wishes more people would wear masks in public, get vaccinated against COVID-19 and influenza and stay home from school or work when sick with any virus, she said.
“We’ve known for decades that wearing masks helps prevent the spread of respiratory viruses. But I think that, take the politics and the controversy out of it — if an individual wants to protect themselves then a mask is a great way to do that. And vaccinations also have become controversial, even though from a medical, scientific standpoint, they are not controversial, it is a no brainer. If you have an injection that can prevent you from getting sick with a virus, then that’s clearly better than getting sick with the virus.”
Dillaha and Snowden agreed, saying that getting vaccinated, masking and avoiding others when ill are the best ways for adults and children to stay out of the hospital and live healthy, normal lives this season.
“I’m hearing from organizations that are requiring vaccines that they are getting pushback from their employees about the flu vaccine,” Dillaha said. “So I think some of (the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy) has carried over, and I hope that people will use this as an opportunity to learn more about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines so that they can make well-informed decisions.”