Doctors predict COVID and flu could make winter miserable. ‘COVID is still out there and still a threat.’

Early signs point to a winter with COVID-19 and flu both making life miserable for those who contract one of the viruses, but this year doesn’t appear to be worse than last when it comes to COVID, doctors say.

The numbers for COVID are up since Thanksgiving, likely because of the holiday gatherings, which is similar to last year, according to Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist at Hartford HealthCare.

“It’s going to rise. It’s going to be complicated by influenza as well,” Wu said. “I think the peak will probably happen sometime in January. … We’re already starting to see a rise in the percent of positivity.”

The positivity rate, released weekly by the governor’s office, was 9.21% as of Thursday, with 413 people in the hospital with COVID. And 15 deaths were reported in the previous week.

On Nov. 23, the day before Thanksgiving, the state had a 7.13% positivity rate, 378 hospitalized and 13 deaths the previous week.

Wu said, “I don’t think we’re going to have a worse year than last year” for COVID.

When it comes to flu, though, he said, “Anything’s worse than last year and the year before. That’s because people are not vaccinated. People are exhibiting social behavior that’s not consistent with staying away from flu.”

Besides those two reasons, Wu said people likely “have less influenza immunity, natural immunity, so they’re more likely to get it.”

He said while vaccines are most important, masking is only advised for people “indoors in a strange place.”

Dr. David Banach, hospital epidemiologist at UConn Health’s John Dempsey Hospital, said, while omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are circulating this year, “BQ.1 is another important one.”

“It seems that it can cause infection in people that have been previously infected with older variants,” he said. “It does seem to be highly transmissible, similar to the other omicron variants.”

Also, monoclonal antibodies, an early treatment for COVID, are not effective against BQ.1, Banach said, “so we no longer offer those to patients who have COVID.” It was mostly used for patients who could not tolerate the medication Paxlovid, he said.

He said it’s possible those who have had COVID will have more protection against another case. “I think what we’re seeing is that people who have reinfections probably have some element of protection and have milder infection associated with the more recent infections,” he said.

But flu and respiratory syncytial virus are also circulating, “But I think, in terms of keeping COVID in the forefront, we have to also look at it in perspective with other respiratory viruses now, including the flu, that are having a very significant impact on individuals and health at large,” Banach said.

While many are predicting an increase in COVID infections, Banach said, “maybe, but not necessarily to the degree that we saw last January, February. I do think that having flu and RSV increases as well could be very impactful with regard to the overall amount of respiratory illness that we’re seeing in the community.”

Both COVID boosters, including the bivalent vaccine that fewer people have been getting, and the flu vaccine, “which fell off many people’s radar the last couple of years,” are important, Banach said.

“Flu vaccine is really critical at this phase,” he said. “And COVID boosters also are important, particularly for older individuals who are at higher risk for severe infections.”

Dr. Richard Martinello, medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health, said it is hard to predict how bad COVID will be this winter, but “it’s really worrisome.”

“You look at the last two winters, and of course we had these big waves that came through,” he said. “And over the last four months we have had a steady to high amount of COVID without that typical pattern of seeing a new variant come in a big wave and then the the wave ends.”

The number of patients in Yale New Haven Hospital with COVID is about the same as other years at this time, Martinello said, but there are 11 patients in intensive care of 94 total, and nine of them are on ventilators. “And that is a challenging number to continue to take care of because ... it just detracts from other needs that our patient population in our community has.”

Martinello added, “What’s important for people to know is ... COVID is still out there and still a threat.”

He recommended wearing masks and cracking open windows to increase ventilation, as well as vaccinations. “All those things help to prevent the spread of illnesses that could really wreck somebody’s holidays,” he said.

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.