ATLANTA — You may have heard someone call this a “triple-demic.”
That’s when there is a high number of cases of COVID-19, the flu and other respiratory viruses.
Channel 2′s Lori Wilson spoke with one family battling the flu.
When Whitney Threatt’s 10-year-old son said he didn’t feel well, her first move was to give him his normal medicine. When that didn’t help, and he started having body aches and chills, she took him to the doctor and found out he had the flu.
“He definitely had a cough. He was sneezing, nausea, he definitely threw up,” Threatt said. “Drowning him in water and Pedialyte. A lot of at-home teas.”
Threatt also came down with the flu. Her symptoms were so severe that she had to go to the hospital.
“I had an 89% oxygen level ... so they had to give me a shot to open up my lungs,” Threatt said.
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Grady Memorial Hospital’s chief medical officer Dr. Robert Jansen says this winter, the hospital is bracing for a “triple-demic” — a high number of cases of the flu, COVID-19 and viruses like RSV. This is something doctors have already seen in other countries.
“We haven’t had a bad flu season in a couple of years because of COVID. People stayed home. They wore masks,” Jansen said.
“I anticipate we’re going to see that here ... the degree to which ... that I don’t know,” Jansen said. “But what I do know is we can minimize it ... through vaccination.”
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Threatt and her son were both vaccinated against COVID-19 but hadn’t gotten their flu shots. Doctors say vaccinations improve the odds of staying healthy.
Threatt says she and her son will get the flu vaccine and, eventually, get back on their feet.
Jansen says that while the infection rate for all three illnesses has significantly increased, the number of people who need to go to the hospital is down, which he attributes solely to vaccinations.
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