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Date: 12/21/2022
WESTFIELD – There has been a significant uptick in flu cases in December, city public health officials said Dec. 14, as they deal with three prominently spreading respiratory viruses at once.
Westfield Health Director Joseph Rouse told the Board of Health that the number of influenza cases in Westfield in the first half of December had already surpassed the total number of confirmed cases in all of November. There were 71 total confirmed influenza cases in November, and 105 in just the first two weeks of December.
“According to our public health nurse, it is more than we have seen in a long, long time,” said Rouse.
Board of Health member Juanita Carnes, who works in an urgent care in Southampton, said that she worked a 12-hour shift recently where her facility had 32 patients, 16 of whom were influenza A cases.
Rouse said flu is now likely more widespread in Westfield than COVID-19 cases, which have remained at a plateau for months, though precise COVID -19 case data has remained difficult to discern since at-home tests became widely available earlier this year.
Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is also spreading across the country in what some public health officials have called a “tripledemic.”
There is an influenza vaccine that is readily available, Rouse said, but treatments for active flu symptoms have become sparse.
“The vaccine is readily available,” said Rouse. “If you haven’t been into a drugstore or supermarket lately, the over-the-counter remedies related to any of your symptoms for influenza or COVID[-19] or RSV are really hard to come by.”