Flu Mortality Rate is Lower this Year

Misbar has discovered that COVID-19 has indeed changed flu season. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the number of deaths due to the flu has fallen dramatically, but it has not dropped to zero. In the last week, only four deaths were attributed to the flu.

Other weeks were low as well. For example, week one of 2021 showed 29 deaths, and in week two, 25 people died of the flu. This season there have been only about 1000 deaths from the flu to date. Last season, the CDC estimated 24,000 to 62,000 deaths from the flu. 

It is possible that some may not be reporting flu-like symptoms as much this year, fearing the threat of quarantine.

Also, some communities may not be testing for the flu as much as in past years due to resources allocated to COVID-19 management. However, where flu tests are being administered, the numbers of positive flu cases are still very low. 

While there is still much to be learned about influenza, there are different guesses as to why this year’s flu mortality rate is much lower than in years past. 

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, the main reason is that measures in place to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 are also working to reduce the transmission of the flu, which is much less contagious. “Though caused by a different virus from the one that causes COVID-19, the flu is also a respiratory viral disease, so everything we are doing to slow transmission of COVID-19, such as wearing face masks, frequent handwashing, and physical distancing, should also reduce transmission of flu,” says Eili Klein, Ph.D., associate professor of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Virologist Richard Webby at St Jude’s hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, tells Nature.com that there are other factors at play. “I don’t think we can put it all down to mask-wearing and social distancing,” he says. Webby suspects that the reduction of international travel played a part. Flu typically travels around the world from one winter to another, while maintaining a lower year-round presence in the tropics. The change in the movement of people clearly contributes.

A higher rate of flu vaccines administered, closed schools, and working from home also may have played a role in the lower numbers.

These changing behaviors caused not only a reduction in influenza numbers but in other viruses also. According to Nature.com, researchers also saw some abrupt declines in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common virus that typically infects young children and can sometimes cause serious conditions such as pneumonia.