Viruses that were on hiatus during Covid are back — and behaving in unexpected ways

As the world dismantles the measures put in place to slow the spread of COVID, viral and bacterial nuisances that were on hiatus are returning

• Adenovirus type 41, previously thought to cause fairly innocuous bouts of gastrointestinal illness, may be triggering severe hepatitis in healthy young children
• Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a bug that normally causes disease in the winter, touched off large outbreaks of illness in kids last summer and in the early fall in the United States and Europe
• Monkeypox, a virus generally only found in West and Central Africa, is causing an unprecedented outbreak in more than a dozen countries in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Australia
• Larger waves of illness could hit, which in some cases may bring to light problems we didn’t know these bugs triggered

How will this play out?

• All eyes will be trained this fall on children's hospitals to see whether there will be a surge in cases of a polio-like condition called acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, which is thought to be caused by infection with enterovirus D68.
• We may see differences in severity of some illnesses, because young children who were sheltered from bugs during the early stages of the pandemic may now catch them when they are older.

The lifting of pandemic control measures could have helped fuel the spread of monkeypox in the current outbreak in Europe, North America, and beyond

• After two years of limited travel, social distancing and public gatherings, people are throwing off the shackles of Covid control measures and embracing a return to pre-pandemic life
• Recent reports suggest recent raves in Spain and Belgium have led to transmission of the virus among some attendees

 

https://www.statnews.com/2022/05/25/viruses-that-were-on-hiatus-during-covid-are-back-and-behaving-in-unexpected-ways/