Dr Katelyn Jetelina's State of Affairs for February 22

Your Local Epidemiologist Dr Jetelina is back with another informative issue of State of Affairs. Here are some excerpts.

"COVID-19: High: Covid-19 wastewater levels are high nationally. And, in fact, higher than they were this time last year. Although national rates are declining, the South has a very weird pattern. We don’t know why.  Covid-19 hospitalization admissions are stalling after a nice decline. We remain at fewer hospitalizations than last year. CDC and WHO are paying attention to another highly mutated variant in South Africa. However, there have only been 9 cases, with no impact on wastewater or hospitalization trends. This seems like a dud, which is great news. No other huge variants are on the horizon; JN continues to be king.

"Flu: Still high and stabilizing: The rate of hospitalizations due to flu remained stable compared to last week. Flu can stretch out, sometimes to even May, so this is unsurprising. It’s not too late to get your flu shot!

"Measles: More outbreaks: This may be a bad year for measles (see why in my previous post), so many epidemiologists are carefully watching the data.  So far, in 2024, we’ve had 20 cases across 11 states. This is about twice as many cases as this time last year."

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It's a disgrace that parents aren't vaccinating their kids and instead letting them suffer from these viruses unnecessarily!

I can remember when measles was declared eradicated from the USA about 20 years ago. What happened to people since then?