Got the sniffles? Here's what to know about summer colds, COVID-19 and more
The three may not go together in many people's minds: partly owing to common myths about germs and partly because many viruses really do have lower activity levels in the summer.
But it is possible to get the sniffles — or worse — in the summer. Federal data
released Friday
, for example, shows COVID-19 is trending up in many parts of the country, with emergency department visits up among people of all ages.
Here's what to know about summer viruses.
How much are colds and flu circulating right now?
The number of people seeking medical care for three key illnesses — COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — is currently low, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Flu is trending down and RSV was steady this week. But COVID-19 is trending up in many mid-Atlantic, southeast, Southern and West Coast states.
The expectation is that COVID-19 will eventually settle into a winter seasonal pattern like other coronaviruses, but the past few years have brought a late summer surge, said Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at University of California Davis Children's Hospital.
Other viruses circulating this time of year include the one that causes 'hand, foot and mouth' disease — which has symptoms similar to a cold, plus sores and rashes — and
norovirus
, sometimes called the stomach flu.
Do viruses spread less in the summer?
Many viruses circulate seasonally, picking up as the weather cools in the fall and winter. So it's true that fewer people get stuffy noses and coughs in the summer — but cold weather itself does not cause colds.
It's not just about seasonality. The other factor is our behavior, experts say. Nice weather means people are opening windows and gathering outside where it's harder for germs to spread.
But respiratory viruses are still around. When the weather gets too hot and everyone heads inside for the air conditioning, doctors say they start seeing more sickness. In places where it gets really hot for a long time, summer can be cold season in its own right.
'I grew up on the East Coast and everybody gets sick in the winter,' said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, an emergency room doctor and Arizona State University researcher. 'A lot of people get sick in the summer here. Why is that? Because you spend more time indoors.'
Should you get another COVID-19 booster now?
For people who are otherwise healthy, timing is a key consideration to getting any vaccine. You want to get it a few weeks before that big trip or wedding, if that's the reason for getting boosted, doctors say. But, for most people, it may be worth waiting until the fall in anticipation of winter cases of COVID-19 really tick up.
'You want to be fully protected at the time that it's most important for you,' said Dr. Costi Sifri, of the University of Virginia Health System.
People at higher risk of complications should always talk with their doctor about what is best for them, Sifri added. Older adults and those with weak immune systems may need more boosters than others, he said.
Are more younger kids getting sick with COVID-19?
Last week, the CDC noted emergency room visits among children younger than 4 were rising. That makes sense, Blumberg said, because many young kids are getting it for the first time or are unvaccinated.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
said in May
that the shots would no longer be recommended for healthy kids, a decision that health experts have said lacks scientific basis. The American Academy of Pediatrics
still endorses COVID-19 shots
for children older than 6 months.
How else can I lower my risk?
The same things that help prevent colds, flu and COVID any other time of the year work in the summer, doctors say.
Spend time outside when you can, wash your hands, wear a mask. And if you're sick, stay home.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed over 5 billion sea stars
WASHINGTON -- Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic. Sea stars – often known as starfish – typically have five arms and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green. Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak's first five years. 'It's really quite gruesome,' said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause. Healthy sea stars have 'puffy arms sticking straight out,' she said. But the wasting disease causes them to grow lesions and 'then their arms actually fall off.' The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The findings 'solve a long-standing question about a very serious disease in the ocean," said Rebecca Vega Thurber, a marine microbiologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study. It took more than a decade for researchers to identify the cause of the disease, with many false leads and twists and turns along the way. Early research hinted the cause might be a virus, but it turned out the densovirus that scientists initially focused on was actually a normal resident inside healthy sea stars and not associated with disease, said Melanie Prentice of the Hakai Institute, co-author of the new study. Other efforts missed the real killer because researchers studied tissue samples of dead sea stars that no longer contained the bodily fluid that surrounds the organs. But the latest study includes detailed analysis of this fluid, called coelomic fluid, where the bacteria Vibrio pectenicida were found. 'It's incredibly difficult to trace the source of so many environmental diseases, especially underwater,' said microbiologist Blake Ushijima of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who was not involved in the research. He said the detective work by this team was 'really smart and significant.' Now that scientists know the cause, they have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars. Prentice said that scientists could potentially now test which of the remaining sea stars are still healthy — and consider whether to relocate them, or breed them in captivity to later transplant them to areas that have lost almost all their sunflower sea stars. Scientists may also test if some populations have natural immunity, and if treatments like probiotics may help boost immunity to the disease. Such recovery work is not only important for sea stars, but for entire Pacific ecosystems because healthy starfish gobble up excess sea urchins, researchers say. Sunflower sea stars 'look sort of innocent when you see them, but they eat almost everything that lives on the bottom of the ocean,' said Gehman. 'They're voracious eaters.' With many fewer sea stars, the sea urchins that they usually munch on exploded in population – and in turn gobbled up around 95% of the kelp forest s in Northern California within a decade. These kelp forests provide food and habitat for a wide variety of animals including fish, sea otters and seals. Researchers hope the new findings will allow them to restore sea star populations -- and regrow the kelp forests that Thurber compares to 'the rainforests of the ocean.' The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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