The measures taken to control the COVID-19 pandemic — social distancing, masking, school closures — worked. Not only did they prevent children from contracting and transmitting COVID-19, they brought the number of cases of other respiratory viruses, such as the flu, to all-time lows.
A recent study published in the journal Chest found that pediatric intensive care unit admissions for bronchiolitis and pneumonia, potential complications of respiratory viruses, plummeted during the period of April to June 2020.
“Bronchiolitis had an 80% drop after the school closures went into effect,” Dr. Janine Zee-Cheng, one of the study’s authors, told HuffPost in a previous interview.
Now that masks are off and classrooms are full again, respiratory viruses are having a renaissance.