The Flu and COVID-19: How the New Virus Stopped Flu Season

The coronavirus pandemic is still raging around the world, with more than half a million deaths related to the disease in just the United States alone. With the world preoccupied with avoiding COVID-19, many have nearly forgotten about flu season. Around the world, this most recent flu season has been incredibly mild, and what many people may not realize is that we have coronavirus to thank for that. Specifically, the precautions taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus have worked on other types of upper-respiratory viruses like influenza. Here’s how this happened.

Extremely Mild Influenza Season

During the summer of 2020, health experts sounded the alarm about the possible implications of a flu season on top of the coronavirus pandemic, but the results have not been what was expected. The CDC has reported that the most recent flu season has been one of the mildest on record in the past decade, with hospitalization rates as of late January quite similar to the least severe season (2011-12) in recent years.

Looking at the numbers, influenza positives are staggeringly low. For comparison, during the 2019-20 flu season, around 400,000 people ended up hospitalized for flu-related illness, and there were around 22,000 deaths. In early February 2021, nearing a typical flu season’s peak, the CDC reported just 165 hospitalizations for the flu since October. So, what is responsible for these extremely low numbers?

Preventative Measures and Vaccines

Most health experts note a few factors may be responsible for the record low in influenza cases. Social distancing measures and widespread mask-wearing used to slow the spread of COVID-19 have proven themselves to be incredibly effective at stopping the flu. For those questioning the efficacy of mask-wearing, this is a great example of how such measures can be effective. Additionally, this past season saw record numbers of flu shots go out, an important factor in controlling the spread of the disease.

Kids out of School

Another important factor could be that many children around the world have been out of the classroom during the worst of the flu season. Children are the primary spreaders of influenza, as they produce much more of the virus and shed it over a longer period. With kids at home and not in schools over flu season, having minimal contact with teachers and other classmates, there was less spread of the influenza virus. COVID-19 appears to spread easily among adults, but in the case of influenza, children seem much more important in the overall spread.