Diseases suppressed during Covid are coming back in new and peculiar ways

[superadmin]

• As the Covid-19 pandemic and resultant social restrictions have abated in much of the world, other viruses are rearing their heads in new and unusual ways.
  
• Influenza, Respiratory syncytial virus, adenovirus, tuberculosis and monkeypox are among a number of viruses to have spiked and exhibited strange behaviors in recent months.
  
• Health experts say Covid-19 restrictions could have reduced exposure and lowered immunity to infectious diseases, making society more vulnerable to new outbreaks.
  

The Covid-19 pandemic has abated in much of the world and, with it, many of the social restrictions implemented to curb its spread, as people have been eager to return to pre-lockdown life.

But in its place have emerged a series of viruses behaving in new and peculiar ways.

Take seasonal influenza, more commonly known as the flu. The 2020 and 2021 U.S. winter flu seasons were some of the mildest on record both in terms of deaths and hospitalizations. Yet cases ticked up in February and climbed further into the spring and summer as Covid restrictions were stripped back.

“We’ve never seen a flu season in the U.S. extend into June,” Dr. Scott Roberts, associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital, told CNBC Tuesday.

“Covid has clearly had a very big impact on that. Now that people have unmasked, places are opening up, we’re seeing viruses behave in very odd ways that they weren’t before,” he said.

And flu is just the beginning.

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