2025-01-10 BC

The province only gave numbers for flu A, flu B, RSV, and COVID-19 for the week ending 4 Jan 2025, but that’s enough to see that flu finally beat out RSV for the most prevalent respiratory disease. COVID-19 levels look still relatively low-ish, though the wastewater graph looks like they are going up slightly.

Mitigation Measures

This article (2024-01-08) reports that the province has re-instituted a mask mandate in health care settings for both patients and providers. I actually spent all morning of 8 Jan in an urgent care setting (it’s a sprain, not a fracture, I’m fine) and didn’t see any signs or notifications about patient masking. (All my health care providers did wear masks in treatment rooms.)

This article (2024-01-09) reports that the BC Nurses Union is concerned that will lead to more abuse of nurses. Apparently, the province is no longer funding greeters to tell people to mask, so it’s not at all clear who is responsible for telling people they have to mask… so yeah, the nurses probably will take the brunt.

Charts

From the BC CDC Situation Report:

Data through Jan 6.

Comparison vs. Other Influenza-Like-Illnesses, from the Viral Pathogen Characterization page:

Percent positivity

As I mentioned above, for the most recent week that we have partial data for (week ending 4 Jan), the number of flu cases is now larger than the number of RSV cases. Note that the number of RSV cases might have peaked.

Last week, there were still more RSV cases than there were in any week last year; fortunately, there are a lot fewer COVID-19 cases.

In the most recent week with full data (ending 28 December) as reported on 10 Jan 2025, among confirmed cases, there were:

  • 36% as many COVID-19 cases as flu cases,
  • 37% as many COVID-19 cases as RSV cases,
  • about as many COVID-19 cases as enterovirus/rhinovirus cases.
  • only about 13% as many COVID-19 cases as all the other influenza-like illnesses (influenza, RSV, enterovirus, rhinovirus, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, parainfluenza, and common-cold coronaviruses) combined.

Wastewater

From Jeff’s wastewater spreadsheet: