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RSV Infection Trends

By December 20, 2022Commentary

RSV actually is a serious concern for children, especially young children,  unlike CV-19.  Minnesota has experienced a case wave, out of the normal season, as has much of the rest of the country.  It appears that this wave is relenting now.

Dave’s notes:

  1. This post is an update of first examination of RSV hospitalization data for Minnesota available from the CDC, published on 12/12/2022 here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/12/12/rsv-in-minnesota/. Today’s post adds data through the week ending 12/3/2022.
  2. Data can be viewed on the CDC RSV-NET Interactive Dashboard (https://www.cdc.gov/rsv/research/rsv-net/dashboard.html) and downloaded from the dataset page (https://data.cdc.gov/Case-Surveillance/Weekly-Rates-of-Laboratory-Confirmed-RSV-Hospitali/29hc-w46k). Data is available starting from the week ending 9/30/2018 through the week ending 12/03/2022. It is important to note that only 58 counties in 12 states, including Minnesota, participate in the CDC’s RSV surveillance program. The exact coverage in Minnesota is unknown. Because this data is only taken from a small number of counties the actual RSV hospitalization rates may differ from those shown in these charts. Hopefully this data at least gives a reasonable representation of the overall trends in RSV hospitalization.
  3. Fig. 1, Minnesota Overall Population RSV Hospital Admissions Per 100k Per Week, 2018-2019 Through 2022-2023 Season: The current 2022-2023 RSV season is shown in bright red. The chart starts with MMWR Week 27 (end of June) and ends with MMWR Week 26 (third week in June). This centers the winter season on the chart, when the peak in RSV infections typically occurs. Recent RSV hospitalizations for the week ending 12/03/2022, averaged over the entire Minnesota population, were 50% below the peak which occurred on 10/29/2022 and was equaled on 12/12/2022.
  4. Fig. 2, Minnesota RSV Hospital Admissions Per 100k Per Week, by Age Group, 2022-2023 Season: The great majority of RSV hospitalizations occur in the 0-4 age group, which peaked the week of 10/29/2022 and has declined since. The only other age group to be above the overall population average was the 75-84 age group, the week ending 11/26/2022.

Join the discussion One Comment

  • DuluthGuy says:

    My kids got RSV this year, one of whom was hospitalized for a few days. It’s been really bad in the schools up here, as I’m sure it has throughout the Midwest. Just goes to show that we messed with everyone’s immune systems via lockdowns in 20/21 and scaring people from going out in 21/22 and are paying the price now and likely will for another few years. Luckily society has seemed to have finally moved on from this nonsense, although you still see a few people with masks on their kids when going out.

    I’ll seriously look into moving out of MN if there’s not major pushback (and people simply ignoring) when the state tries to pull this again. I say “when”, as I’m rather certain it’ll happen again at some point in the future (1-2 years). They were given the green light (or at least think they were) this past November and there’s little to stop them.

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