Science News, February 2 2021.
Heading into the dead of winter, doctors and scientists have noticed something odd: Missing cases of non-COVID-19 respiratory illnesses, specifically flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
“We’re seeing very low numbers of both of these infections, even now, while we’re in the peak season,” says Rachel Baker, an epidemiologist at Princeton University. “We really should be seeing cases go up.”
Instead, positive flu tests reported in December are a little less than one one-hundredth of all of those tallied in December 2019, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. RSV’s drop in reported cases — to one two-hundredth of those a year earlier — is even bigger. Read More >