Flu, COVID-19, and RSV in the U.S.: Insights from the Latest Surveillance Season

Welcome to 2023-2024 season’s respiratory surveillance recap, where we’ll share insights from the most recent respiratory surveillance season, covering three major respiratory viruses: COVID-19, influenza, and RSV. Tracking these illnesses is imperative for maintaining population health because these illnesses significantly impact individual wellbeing and healthcare costs, resource allocation for vaccination and treatment, health messaging strategies, and hospital capacity planning, among others. Overall, the 2023-2024 respiratory season looks similar to what we observed last season. COVID-19 remains the largest source of viral respiratory-related hospitalizations and deaths, followed by influenza, and then RSV. Notably, wastewater has proven to be an effective early warning indicator for all three viruses, providing signals of increases several weeks in advance (CDC RESP-NET, CDC Severe Viral Respiratory Illness dashboard).