Leslee Cohen-Lavin and her family were feeling pretty good just before the holidays.
“Then all of a sudden, we each went down right when break started,” said Cohen-Lavin, of Highland Park. Her 5-year-old daughter got a fever and aches and lost her appetite. Soon, Cohen-Lavin developed a days-long fever. Finally, her husband got what felt like a head cold. They canceled most of their plans for winter break.
“It’s been a tough break, but it could be a lot worse,” said Cohen-Lavin, whose family is now on the upswing.
It’s a common sentiment right now throughout Chicagoland, because it’s not just the holiday season, it’s also a far less celebrated time of year — respiratory virus and stomach bug season.
As Chicago residents have been partaking in festivities over the past several weeks, various illnesses have taken hold. Flu activity “continues to rapidly increase,” RSV activity is “very high,” and COVID-19 activity is low but increasing, according to a Dec. 27 Chicago Department of Public Health surveillance summary. Statewide, the percentages of positive tests for the flu and RSV also have been increasing, as have the percentages of emergency department visits for those illnesses.
Nationally, outbreaks of norovirus, which can cause vomiting and diarrhea, are also way up. In Illinois, the state health department is evaluating reports of norovirus outbreaks, but initial analysis shows that norovirus cases are slightly above the levels seen in the years right before the pandemic, spokesman Michael Claffey said in a statement.
“It’s all out there,” Dr. Laura Zimmermann, a primary care doctor and chief of general internal medicine at Rush University System for Health, said of the viruses now circulating.
Zimmermann just got over a nasty viral illness herself, she said, complete with fever, coughing, congestion and a sore throat. Still, she said, her voice weak with laryngitis: “I certainly wouldn’t panic. I think this is kind of a typical cold and flu season.”
Given the uptick in respiratory illnesses, the Illinois Department of Public Health has recommended that health care facilities move to facility-wide masking.
“We’re trying to (take) measures to keep our patients safe,” said Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, a UChicago Medicine associate professor of medicine in the department of infectious disease and global health. UChicago Medicine is among the local health care systems recommending or requiring everyone to wear masks in patient areas.
At the moment, RSV and the flu are among the more prevalent respiratory illnesses in Chicago, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health.
In Chicago, test positivity for the flu was at 11.2% for the week that ended Dec. 21, up from just 2.6% two weeks earlier. About 2.8% of emergency department visits were for the flu for the week that ended Dec. 21, up from 0.5% two weeks earlier.
Yet, encouragingly, emergency department visits and test positivity for the flu in Chicago still are not as high as they were about a year ago. They’re also not as high as they were during a rough flu season about two years ago in Chicago.
“We’re not seeing anything like that,” said Dr. Jonathan Pinsky, medical director for infection control at Endeavor Health Edward Hospital, though he noted that flu has not yet peaked.
On the other hand, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, seems to have come on stronger so far this season than in the previous year in Chicago — though not as strongly as it did during a particularly difficult season two years ago when patients with RSV filled Chicago-area children’s hospitals.
RSV usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms, and most people recover in a week or two. Babies and older adults, however, are more likely to develop severe cases. At Lurie Children’s Hospital, 23 children were hospitalized with RSV as of Monday, and about half of them were in the intensive-care unit, said Dr. Larry Kociolek, Lurie vice president for system preparedness, prevention and response.
In Chicago, test positivity for RSV was at nearly 15% for the week ending Dec. 21, compared with 8.5% for the same week the previous year, and about 1.3% of emergency department visits were for RSV compared with 0.8% the same week during the previous year, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health.
At the state level, test positivity for RSV was up to 13.5% for the week that ended Dec. 21, compared with 10.6% two weeks earlier, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
COVID-19 activity, meanwhile, is increasing but remains low in Chicago, according to the city health department. Some measures of COVID-19 activity seem lower now than they were a year ago at this time.
In all, of about 250 patients at Edward Hospital this week, about 40 had some type of virus, with about one-third testing positive for COVID-19, another one-third with influenza and the rest with other types of viruses, Pinsky said.
The increases in respiratory illnesses, however, are not unexpected.
“It seems like a pretty average winter as far as the viruses go, at least so far,” Pinsky said.
An exception to that, on the national level, may be norovirus. Though norovirus outbreaks are typically more common from November to April, the numbers nationally are higher than usual for this time of year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 91 suspected or confirmed outbreaks of norovirus across 14 states (not including Illinois) for the week that ended Dec. 5, compared with a maximum of 41 outbreaks for that week in other recent years.
The Chicago Department of Public Health doesn’t track individual cases of norovirus, only outbreaks. The department had reports of “several small outbreaks of suspected norovirus” in Chicago in December, though that “is not out of the ordinary for this time of year,” spokesperson Jacob Martin said in an email.
It’s also difficult to know exactly how widespread norovirus is in the Chicago area because many people recover at home without being tested, said Hazra of UChicago Medicine.
“We don’t have hard numbers but we certainly have been noticing an increase in phone calls and questions,” Hazra said.
Most people with norovirus feel better within one to three days, according to the CDC — though it can be a rough couple of days.
“It can be very short-lived but seem pretty severe when you have it,” Pinsky said.
Norovirus is easily transmitted, often by sharing food, eating food handled by others with the virus, or by touching contaminated surfaces or objects and then putting one’s hands in one’s mouth.
One of the best ways to avoid norovirus is by washing hands thoroughly and often. The CDC also advises those with symptoms to stay home when they’re ill and then for two more days after their symptoms stop.
To protect against the flu and COVID-19, Zimmermann recommends people get vaccinated annually. Even if people haven’t yet been vaccinated, there’s still time to do so this season, given that the flu and COVID-19 will likely still be circulating for a while, she said.
“If you’re exposed, you’re less likely to get it,” she said of people who get vaccinated. “If you do get it, you’re less likely to have severe symptoms.”
Matt Tafoya of West Town got COVID-19 and flu vaccines at his annual checkup Tuesday at the Rush West Loop clinic.
“I know a lot of stuff is going around,” Tafoya said. “I have a 3-year-old, so I have to make sure we keep as many bugs out of our house as we can.”
Older adults and pregnant women also can be vaccinated against RSV. The vaccine is available for adults 75 and older and for those 60 to 74 who are at increased risk of severe RSV. Infants can receive an RSV antibody if their mothers didn’t get vaccinated during pregnancy.
People with symptoms such as coughing, runny nose or fever should try to self-isolate, and if they cannot do so, they should wear a mask around others, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
“I think it’s pretty common to have the flu, COVID, RSV kind of creeping up,” said Dr. Morgan Tarbutton, a primary care doctor at Duly Health and Care. “We’ll just see where it heads through the rest of the winter months.”
