Two years after the most stringent restrictive measures, the legacy of Covid-19 – in addition to the long Covid still largely to be investigated – also consists in the change in behavior of a series of already known viruses. Which are coming back to hit us second unexpected dynamics. He talks about it Cnbc in an in-depth study in which, for example, it examines the flu virus. If, similarly to what happened in much of the world, in 2020 and 2021 the epidemic in the United States was one of the mildest in history both in terms of deaths and hospitalizations, the cases have started climbing last February and they continued the climb in the spring and in this very early part of summer, in parallel with the elimination of the already very mild security measures for the coronavirus.
“We have never seen one flu season in the United States extends through June – he explained to the Cnbc Scott Roberts, associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital – Covid has clearly had a major impact on this. Now that people have taken off their masks and seats have reopened we are seeing that viruses behave in very strange ways that we did not know before“.
Not just the seasonal flu. Even the respiratory syncytial virusthe most important causative agent of childhood bronchiolitis and pneumonia, common in winter and particularly significant for infants and young children, has a worrying increase last summer in Europe (including Italy), the United States and Japan. Then last January he registered a large number of cases linked to adenovirus 41usually responsible for gastroenteritiswhich this time became the apparent cause of a rather severe liver disorder among younger children with a number of acute pediatric hepatitis.
Cnbc he remembers, limiting himself to the United States, the worst flare-up of tuberculosis in the past 20 years in Washington state. And then obviously the monkeypox, spread in about thirty non-endemic countries but still in a very limited number of cases, as we have seen in the latest updates on the subject. To top it off with symptoms in part different from those expectedfor instance without the flu-like phase and immediately through the development of skin rashes and lesions. “There are many unknowns that worry me – added Roberts – we are witnessing very atypical behavior in different ways for a certain number of viruses”.
One explanation is obviously that the numerous protection and distancing measures applied a little everywhere between 2020 and early 2022 have brought down the circulation rate for other pathogens, and we – committed against the mysterious Sars-CoV-2 – nWe haven’t bothered too much with understanding how they had changed in that period and often we have not even diagnosed infections (this is the case of tuberculosis in Washington state, with several hundred cases between 2021 and the first months of this year). Now, with the elimination of all protections, viruses that have not been widespread in recent years have been identified a more than fertile ground in people “hungry for travel” as he explains Cnbcand sociability.
They also have two years of reduced exposure lowered individual immunity to certain diseases and thus made society as a whole more vulnerable. This is especially true for young children, typically germ amplifiers, that they have missed many opportunities to acquire antibodies to the most common viruses, both through gestation and during the first years of socialization. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionalso a certain decline in mandatory pediatric vaccinations or strongly recommended would do the rest, potentially increasing the risks of other vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough.
“During the Covid pandemic, access to primary care, including childhood vaccinations, was not available for many children,” he said. Cnbc Jennifer Horney, professor of epidemiology at the University of Delaware – to prevent the increase of these diseases, vaccination campaigns of recovery are needed globally. A final element could also be linked to ours increased attention with respect to the emergence of outbreaks: “Covid has raised the profile of public health issues in such a way that perhaps we pay more attention to these events when they occur,” added Horney. That she explained how on the other hand in many countries around the world the public health systems set up to identify Covid have also helped diagnose other diseases. Also average they have given and continue to give a lot of space to this kind of news, something much less frequent before. In some cases some infections that in the past would not have been reported, at least not with the current emphasis and which today are told in depth, can help create a sense of alarm that experts categorize under the label “surveillance bias”.
Monkey pox, over 2,000 cases worldwide. WHO: “Moderate risk”
Covid, La Vecchia: “Other than 600 thousand, the positives are between 2.5 and 3 million”
Source: Vanity Fair
