Adams Co. gives update on respiratory illnesses

RITZVILLE – Adams County Health Officer Alex Brzezny gave an update during the Adams County Commissioners and Board of Health meeting Feb. 14 on several ongoing trends for illnesses and diseases in the county and the region.

“The overarching message to take home is there's still a lot of influenza out there,” Brzezny said. “(Respiratory Syncytial Virus) is fairly low right now in our area. COVID is higher than influenza and plateauing, maybe decreasing, but nationally, the picture is that everything is declining and less people are in the hospitals.”

Brzezny, who also serves as Grant County’s Health Officer, talked about the COVID trends in the county.

“It's fair to say that when you compare it to say the '21-22 trends, it's more resembling the prior one, '22-23. So it's not necessarily a season for COVID that will be worse than the last year, and we're kind of seeing similarities there,” he said. “We have seen a significant rise; like two weeks ago, we had like 30 plus cases of COVID in our county in a week, and then we dropped down to 18, so we can go from 30 to 18, we have an outbreak, we have a bunch of people get sick, and then we don't. So it's harder for us to (track) it. (Grant County) is no better. This is only what we can track because very few people are reporting.”

Influenza also has a presence, currently.

“Influenza in general peaked towards the end of the year, and then it's been decreasing since then,” Brzezny said. “So influenza, we're not seeing as much influenza, even though recently, again, the last week or two in Adams County I've seen reports of eight to 10 cases of influenza a week. So we are still seeing that. When you see eight cases of influenza in a small county like ours, that means there's much more influenza out there.”

Brzezny said the other primary respiratory illness, RSV, is trending down and is not much of a threat to public safety. He also provided some context on the difference between the three main respiratory illnesses and their danger.

“The national statistics on the number of RSV deaths in adults is about 10 to 12,000 deaths a year, and influenza is about 30 to 40,000 and COVID is like 60 to 80,000,” Brzezny said. “So you've got these three diseases, RSV being about 15 to 20% of the deaths of all diseases combined, with influenza taking about 30 to 40%  and then 50% or more is COVID.”

Brzezny said the danger of COVID presents a challenge when it comes to getting the public to get vaccines.

“You have something that has almost 10 times more deaths, like COVID compared to flu, and the immunizations against COVID are at about 7% in our county,” he said. “But 7% of our residents decided to vaccinate this year, and be up to date on the COVID vaccine versus the 25% to 30% for influenza, for a disease that is that is about 10 times deadlier, at least based on the count that we have, and for a vaccine that's about 10 to 20% more effective than influenza vaccine.”

The challenge extends to other vaccines too, Brzezny said, which is further challenged by low supply of COVID prescription treatments such as Paxlovid.

“There were times in the past, before COVID, where 80 90% of people were vaccinated against influenza,” he said. “They were you know, really high numbers and then … this year we get like 60 to 70%. It's like, why? what happened there? Is it the fatigue, people are just getting tired of it? Then the COVID vaccinations, it's really challenging to see a disease that has so much impact, and we have a vaccine for it, but the Paxlovid is almost impossible to find.’’

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.

    Adams County Health Officer Alex Brzezny, who also serves as Grant County’s Health Officer, working with hospitals such as Samaritan, pictured, said overall there is still currently a significant presence of Influenza and COVID-19, with a fairly low presence of Respiratory Syncytial Virus.