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Colorado has wrapped up its first relatively ordinary respiratory disease season since the pandemic began, with no unusually large or strangely timed spikes in illness. But with COVID-19 still in the mix, this new normal still means a higher level of severe illness and death than the state experienced before 2020. In the fall of 2020 and 2021, Colorado and the country as a whole saw large waves of COVID-19, but almost none of the usual illnesses from flu and respiratory syncytial virus.

RSV causes colds for most people, but can be severe for babies and older people, particularly those with other health conditions. In the fall of 2022, COVID-19 didn’t cause as much destruction, but a spike in RSV sent an unusual number of Colorado kids to hospitals , possibly because a large cohort of younger children hadn’t gotten infected while people around them were taking respiratory precautions. That year’s flu season also started unusually early .



This year, flu and RSV hospitalizations started to take off in Colorado in October and peaked in late December, which is roughly when hospitals expect increased virus activity, said Dr. Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth. The state’s COVID-19 hospitalizations followed a similar trajectory, though they started rising in the summer and peaked a few weeks before the other viruses.

“I would never say ‘normal,’ because every time I say normal there’s a new normal...

but it was mo.

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