“We’re going to have COVID in the fall, and we’re going to have flu in the fall,” says Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “And either one of those by themselves can stress certain hospital systems.” Dr. Redfield spoke with WebMD this week to warn U.S. citizens that as bad as the novel coronavirus is now, it may get a lot worse later this year.
Managing influenza is a vital part of ensuring that hospitals are not overwhelmed. “I’ve seen hospital intensive care units stretch by a severe flu season, and clearly, we’ve all seen it recently with COVID,” says Dr. Redfield. An important tool we can use to help prevent ICUs from being full in the fall is to get a flu shot in the coming months. “If there’s one thing we all can do besides the importance of wearing a mask, social distancing, hand washing, and be smart about gatherings — that basically ultimately prepare ourselves, for the fall, it is to get the flu vaccine.”
Currently, just 47% of U.S. citizens get the flu shot each year according to CDC data. Dr. Redfield warns that the rate of flu vaccination should be around 65% and that the ‘anti-vax’ or ‘vaccine hesitancy’ mentality is detrimental to reaching those goals, especially in a year it is more vital than ever. “You may then be able to negate the necessity to take up a hospital bed,” explains Dr. Redfield. “And then that hospital bed can be more available for those that potentially get hospitalized for COVID.”
It is also important to note that hospital stays can be hugely expensive and that 27.5 million people did not have health insurance in 2018, according to Census data. The CDC says it is doing what it can to make sure uninsured Americans have access to flu vaccines too. It ordered significantly more flu vaccines for fall 2020 than in previous years. “Normally, we only purchase about 500,000 doses for uninsured adults to give to the States,” says Dr. Redfield. “This year, I’ve purchased 10 million doses for uninsured adults.”
There was some other good news in the CDC briefing. While case numbers in the U.S. continue to escalate — rising from 4-million to 5-million in just three weeks – the mortality rate is declining.
“We really are getting better as physicians and managing these patients,” says Dr. Redfield. “Good recognition of the hypercoagulable state. The importance of anticoagulation. The recognition that steroids has a role in advanced disease. The earlier ability to use remdesivir. So, the mortality, I think, continues to decline.”
That optimism doesn’t mean we can stop taking preventative measures. Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has also weighed in on the repercussions of COVID-19 in Q3 and Q4 2020. He reiterated that as cities and states think about opening this fall, they need to take a balanced view and think beyond just the economic impact, to consider biology. “To think that you can ignore the biologic and get the economy back, it’s not gonna happen,” says Dr. Fauci. “You gotta do both. You gotta get control of the biologic as you carefully open the country.”
Dr. Fauci also warns that while work on the vaccine is progressing, when it is available it will not be a silver bullet to stop the pandemic completely. “Measles [vaccine] is 97 to 98 percent effective,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview with National Geographic. “I don’t think that’s going to be the case [with a COVID-19 vaccine].” He hopes that a vaccine for the novel coronavirus will be as much as 75% effective, but stresses that other measures such as wearing masks will still be necessary. “That would not mean that you could throw caution to the wind and do nothing else,” he says.