Predictions Call for a Rough Flu Season

The 2020-2021 influenza season was practically nonexistent, thanks to social distancing and other COVID-19 protocols in place last fall and winter. Health experts are skeptical that the U.S. will experience two mild flu seasons in a row, especially as schools are reopened for in-person learning and some areas of the country are not enforcing masking, NBC-TV reports.

Health officials are urging people to get their flu shots now, to prevent further strain on hospitals already overwhelmed by COVID-19 and other viruses. Two analyses from researchers at the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health in Pennsylvania warn that the upcoming flu season could be difficult.

Dr. Mark Roberts, director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory, and his team used mathematical modeling to predict hospitalizations during the upcoming flu season. On average, about 200,000 people are hospitalized with the flu each year, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Roberts’ team calculated that the 2021-22 flu season could result in as many as 600,000 such hospitalizations.

Another team found that the 2021-22 flu season could have around 20% more flu cases than normal, although there is the potential for as high as double the typical caseload, which is between 9 million and 45 million illnesses in the U.S. 

These analyses represent worst-case scenarios, based on an extremely contagious flu strain, coupled with low vaccination rates. Fortunately, at this point, there are no new or worrisome flu variants on the horizon, according to Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

But given that scenario, the models suggested that 75% of Americans would need to get the flu shot to avoid the additional hospitalizations. In general, about half of the U.S. population gets the flu vaccination annually, according to the CDC.