Epidemiologist David Dowdy says vaccines and a preventive drug for RSV offer hope for a healthier fall and winter this year.
Last year’s “tripledemic” of flu, COVID-19, and RSV left many of us wary of what the coming respiratory virus season might bring.
This year’s landscape is already different, however, with new vaccines and treatments, like the game-changing antibody that protects kids from RSV, offering new ways to tamp down infections and transmission.
In this Q&A, adapted from the July 28 episode of Public Health On Call, Dowdy, a professor in the epidemiology department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discusses what we can learn from last year’s virus season, how and why this year might be different, and why vaccinations continue to play a key role in determining how severe the viruses’ toll will be:
Source: Johns Hopkins University