A conversation with William Schaffner, MD.
Last season, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, cases of influenza were essentially nonexistent.
Not surprisingly, the majority of experts, officials and physicians did not see that coming. Many were openly vocal about concerns of a possible “twindemic”, where the flu and COVID-19 would cause an even worse public health crisis.
There is not an exact explanation on why cases of the flu were so low, but the implementation of prevention measures such as masking and social distancing, combined with a lack of international travel, surely had something to do with it.
However, this coming flu season will see many less restrictions in place and world-wide travel begin again.
This leaves many wondering how this will impact the upcoming flu season.
Contagion recently sat down with William Schaffner, MD, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID), to discuss what we might see in the coming months.
“I’m worried again that we’ll have a ‘twindemic’,” Schaffner said. “We’ll have COVID being transmitted, we’ll have flu being transmitted and I think we’ll be doing a lot of testing, to try and sort the two from each other as we take care of patients.”
