Non-COVID Respiratory Diseases
This article reports that BC CDC says that this year’s flu shot is about 50% effective. That sounds bad compared to like the measles vax or the first results for the mRNA vax, but half is still a big fraction!
In addition to not updating their COVID-19 statistics (which is why there was no BC blog posting yesterday), they also did not update their flu statistics or wastewater data.
At 13:00 on Friday Dec 30, the wait time at BC Children’s Hospital’s wait time is only 1:33, so at least anecdotally, the crisis is easing here.
In the US overall, influenza-like illnesses have clearly peaked (red line for this year):
In the US’ Pacific Northwest, upper respiratory infections have at least plateaued:
Recommended Reading
If you want to read a 2022 COVID-19 in BC retrospective (from someone else, not me), here you go.