It isn’t just just Covid , which is adding….
It’s other virus’s like the Flu , Colds and the new one RSV…..
With people back to hanging out inside in poorly ventilated area’s….
Lackluster new booster sign-ups….
And most giving up masking and spacing?
(Covid fatigue…)
The virus’s get new life…..
Just in time for colder weather and with other respiratory viruses on the rise, the mix of Covid-19 variants is shifting again in New York City in potentially worrying ways.
The Omicron variant that accounted for most infections through the summer, BA.5, is now giving way to a variant soup — a mixture of different Omicron subvariants, including BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, which are even more transmissible and better at dodging immunity.
With most testing now done at home, it is hard to get a clear picture of the amount of virus circulating. The city’s official Covid case numbers have been holding steady for two months, at about 2,000 cases reported per day. But hospitalizations have again started to increase. There were about 1,100 people hospitalized with Covid-19 in New York City on Oct. 24, up from 750 in mid-September, according to state data.
The rise in Covid hospitalizations is coinciding with the early arrival of flu season and a nationwide surge in RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, which can cause breathing difficulty in young children and older adults. The result is a brewing triple threat that is already increasing emergency room visits, and raising concern that hospitals could again be strained this winter….
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Doctors say the pandemic shifted patterns of immunity, by reducing the circulation of regular viruses with masks, and isolation measures. Now that those precautions have been curtailed, familiar viruses are circulating again at high levels, and both the flu and RSV seasons have arrived sooner than expected.
“What we are seeing right now is a combination of many viruses causing a lot of stress on the health care system,” said Dr. Jay Varma, the director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response.
Some children’s hospitals are already at capacity in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., as well as in some southern states, due largely to a surge in RSV cases. In New York, Gov. Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams both said Wednesday that hospitals overall were still able to handle their patient loads….