The ‘tripledemic’ has landed: What it looks like, and what to do

For months, public health experts in the U.S. have been warning of an impending tidal wave of respiratory illness — an ominously termed “tripledemic” with sky-high cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and COVID in the same season. And early, steep spikes of both RSV and the flu, combined with a burgeoning swell of COVID cases, indicate that this moment has now arrived in Maryland and most other states. Dr. J. David Gatz, emergency department medical director at the University of Maryland Medical Center, says the term tripledemic indeed “captures the situation we’re in” now, still early in the respiratory illness season, with three viruses already “surging more or less at the same time.”