Shahab: Flu and COVID cases falling, RSV cases increasing into 2024

While it might seem like a lot of people are battling a pre- or post-holiday bug, Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer suggests things are getting better.

“I think last year and this year, we’ve had a typical respiratory illness season like we used to have before the pandemic,” Dr. Saqib Shahab told guest host Taylor MacPherson on The Evan Bray Show on Monday.

“The only difference now is that we also now have COVID-19 that comes along at a higher rate in the winter. The good news is that in our latest CRISP (Community Respiratory Illness Surveillance Program) report, COVID and influenza rates are slowly starting to come down – so that’s good news.”

According to the latest CRISP report — which showed data from Dec. 17 to Dec. 30 — the test positivity rate for influenza dropped to 13.7 per cent from 31.1 per cent at the start of the previous four-week period.

As for COVID-19, the number of lab-confirmed cases over an eight-week period decreased from 496 to 202. Detected cases were highest in the 65-and-over age group (44.9 per cent), followed by the 20-to-64 age group (39.1 per cent).

Shahab doesn’t think the cooler weather that’s on the way to Saskatchewan will lead to an increase in illnesses.

“In the northern hemisphere, coughs and colds typically pick up in the fall and winter when the air is dryer. Viruses like that environment. We in the prairies saw influenza first (in the fall) and the rest of Canada is seeing it now,” he explained.

“There’s lots of different factors. There’s been lots of people travelling and lots of holiday gatherings. All of that plays a part.”

If there’s one bug that has been making its way around the population more than others, Shahab said it’s Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).

“It’s something we’ve always monitored along with influenza and COVID. It mostly impacts children,” he said. “In 2020 and 2021, we didn’t see a lot of RSV, but the last two years have been more typical RSV seasons. It lasts for around two to three months.

“For most healthy children, RSV is like a bad cold, but occasionally we see young children requiring hospital care.”

Shahab suggested some signs of RSV are kids not eating or drinking, having a fever, and breathing rapidly. However, he added that most kids do well against it.

The government’s latest CRISP report found that RSV hospitalizations increased by 147 per cent — from 21 to 52 — over a two-week span in December. It did not say what the age of those patients were.