Covid, RSV and the flu: Queensland passes three virus peaks in two months

Experts have warned the worst isn’t over yet despite the three prominent respiratory viruses all officially passing their peaks.

Case numbers for three respiratory viruses in Queensland have now peaked, but experts have warned it is not the time for complacency as further “nasty” peaks could appear within the year.

The state government revealed this week the third Covid-19 Omicron wave had peaked on July 26, with 1123 people in hospital and 66,569 active cases.

Yesterday the number of hospitalisations dropped dramatically to 596, while the number of active cases had more than halved to 28,869 in just over two weeks.

Similarly, federal health data has shown flu cases peaked just below 5000 notifications in the week to June 19.

Meanwhile, the number of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases also peaked in the week to June 19 with 2327 weekly cases.

RSV was added to the national notifiable diseases list on July 1 last year, with a Queensland Health spokesman saying its symptoms could often mirror that of Covid-19 and could cause severe illness in young children as well as those who are immunocompromised.

“A single RSV infection does not result in long-lasting protective immunity, and symptomatic illness tends to occur repetitively in children,” he said.

But despite with three viruses reaching their peaks in the past two months, infectious diseases expert Paul Griffin said Queenslanders could not afford to be complacent and assume the worst was over.

“Hopefully we’ll regress back to seeing more predictable patterns of both the flu and RSV when we have fewer Covid restrictions to impact on the epidemiology of those viruses,” he said.

“But that might take a year or two, so we still might have an altered epidemiology for both those viruses and we could still see another nasty peak of both of those next year as well.”

Dr Griffin said at the peak of the three viruses in June and July, there was a “huge concern” in the health industry.

“Not only could we see dual infections, and the severity of those was often greater than the individual infections, but just the overall burden of respiratory disease and the impact on the health system was really challenging at one point in time,” he said.

Infectious diseases expert Paul Griffin

“Hopefully this is the last time we see all three circulating at high levels together.”

Dr Griffin said Queenslanders need to be cautious during intervening periods between peaks, as case numbers are likely to stay relatively high until the next peak, which the state government has predicted will hit in December.

“We have seen those troughs, the amount of transmission we see between those peaks, go up over time so it’s likely we’re going to go down to a higher level than we saw previously, even during the lower times,” he said.

As for potential super spreader events such as festivals and the Ekka in Brisbane, Dr Griffin said it was too early to tell whether daily case numbers would be impacted.

“There will be transmission occurring at the event, and a number of cases will arise as a result. But whether it’s significant enough to change what we see as the case numbers, remains to be seen,” he said.

“We see a big fluctuation of case numbers everyday based on how many people get tested and report it. We need to be cautious not to implicate any cases in the coming weeks that will definitely arise as a result of the Ekka.”

It comes as Queensland recorded 3358 new Covid-19 cases on Friday and 11 deaths.