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HOW VIRUSES MAY OUTCOMPETE EACH OTHER

THREE YEARS into the pandemic, Covid-19 is still going strong, causing wave after wave as case numbers soar, subside, then ascend again. But this past autumn saw something new — or rather, something old: the return of the flu. Plus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) — a virus that makes few headlines in normal years — ignited in its own surge, creating a “tripledemic.”
The surges in these old foes were particularly striking because flu and RSV all but disappeared during the first two winters of the pandemic. Even more surprising, one particular version of the flu may have gone extinct during the early Covid pandemic. The World Health Organization’s surveillance program has not definitively detected the B/Yamagata flu strain since March 2020. “I don’t think anyone is going to stick their neck out and say it’s gone just yet,” says Richard Webby, Ph.D., a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. But, he adds, “we hope it got squeezed out.” Such an extinction would be a super rare event, Webby says.

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