It’s officially football season, soup season, and sweater season. Unfortunately, our favorite cozy time of year also comes with an uninvited guest: cold, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) season. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have determined that in most areas of the U.S., RSV season typically begins in the fall, peaks in winter, and decreases in spring, which means now it’s time to start being extra careful about sneezing into our elbows and regularly washing our hands. But there’s also good news: Experts expect that the post-pandemic surge in RSV cases is behind us, and that this year’s RSV levels should follow more typical, pre-COVID patterns. Ahead, learn more about how RSV is trending for 2024-2025, and how to keep your cozy season from becoming cold season.
What can we expect for the 2024-2025 RSV season?
“The CDC predicts that the 2024-2025 RSV season will likely be similar to, or milder than, the 2023-2024 season — at least when it comes to severe RSV infections requiring hospitalization,” says Rebecca Choudhury, M.D., a board-certified internal medicine and infectious disease physician and assistant professor in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
That’s great news for the populations most at risk of serious RSV infections, which include infants younger than six months, some young children, adults 60 to 74 with underlying medical conditions, and all adults 75 and older. But as Choudhury points out, the lessened surge in cases doesn’t mean that we should stop worrying about prevention. Often, RSV doesn’t require treatment and the infected person simply heals at home without seeking medical attention. “These mild infections are likely underdiagnosed, and, therefore, harder to predict from year to year,” she says.
Doctors also have new tools in their toolbox: new vaccines developed specifically to address RSV in the folks most at risk. “One factor that may help decrease the severity of this year’s RSV season is the availability of new RSV vaccines: Arexvy, Abrysvo, and mResvia,” Choudhury says. The CDC recommends one dose of Abrysvo for pregnant people during weeks 32 through 36 of pregnancy; adults ages 60-74 who have comorbidities that put them at risk of severe RSV, and all adults 75 and older, should get a single dose of any FDA-licensed RSV vaccine.
Why do RSV surges vary from season to season?
So why are we checking in on RSV predictions like it’s awards season? Thanks to the chaos of the pandemic, the timing and level of RSV surges have been in flux. 2020 had historically low levels of RSV due to pandemic isolation; as a result, the illness went a little haywire in 2021. “RSV is a seasonal virus,” says Mary Gover, M.D., a board-certified internal medicine physician and assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. “COVID disrupted the seasonality.” In 2021, RSV began to circulate in late spring, much earlier than the typical autumnal surge. “This disruption was thought to be due to a few factors,” Gover explains. “One factor is that spread during normal seasonality was disrupted by masking, isolation, and closures. The next factor was an increase in the pool of susceptible hosts.” As she explains, once the world started opening up, and people were coming together who had previously been isolated, “there was a bigger pool of people to whom the virus could spread.”