Flu keeps raging in Tennessee and COVID is coming right behind it

Tennessee has been a national hotspot for the flu for several weeks, as the U.S. influenza season shapes up to be one of the worst in more than a decade. And the feared “tri-demic” is beginning to put a pinch on local hospitals.

Maury Regional Medical Center in Columbia has been caring for a dozen flu patients this week and roughly as many with COVID. Hospitals are also seeing more adults with RSV, a respiratory virus that usually causes trouble only for young children.

“Along with your usual winter surge of other respiratory illnesses, it certainly has the potential to overwhelm any hospital system,” says Dr. Deborah Goldsmith, an infectious disease specialist at Maury Regional.

State data show roughly 500 COVID patients in beds across Tennessee, a figure that started rising again the week of Thanksgiving.

Hospitals throughout the region are already having problems finding open beds. On Thursday, Goldsmith says a patient was transferred from a larger Nashville emergency department to Maury Regional because capacity is so short.

The tri-demic isn’t just a concern for hospital capacity. Some patients are also getting hit by more than one virus at once.

“We have seen COVID and influenza in several of the same patients over time, and that is definitely a terrible combination,” Goldsmith says.

Infectious disease experts say it’s not too late for a flu shot, and they recommend the newest COVID booster shot, along with considering a mask in crowded places and covering any cough or sneeze.

For most patients, the symptoms are not severe enough for hospitalization. Still, sicknesses are slamming social lives to a halt.

Amy Lankheit of Smyrna — widely known as Metro’s lead sign language interpreter through daily COVID briefings — went ahead and canceled a holiday party for other Nashville-area interpreters planned for this weekend. Her household is on its second round of the flu for the season, and she didn’t want to risk getting anyone sick.

“One thing that COVID did teach us is, if sickness is going around, we don’t need to be together,” she says. “We need interpreters out in the hospitals. I don’t want to put Nashville at a shortage because we want to have a holiday party.”

She says it was going to be the first holiday party since COVID — now indefinitely postponed.