Facility managers with healthcare organizations have gone to great lengths since last March to revamp their buildings to accommodate key measures that can prevent the spread of the coronavirus. They have upgraded spaces at entryways and in waiting areas to allow visitors to remain at least 6 feet apart. As challenging as these changes have been, new evidence is emerging that social distancing is paying off, and not just related to COVID-19.

Flu numbers for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the United States as a whole are well below normal across all ages, though far from zero, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Likewise the country has seen few cases of acute flaccid myelitis, a form of childhood paralysis that is thought to be caused by viral infection. The rate of that illness typically spikes in the fall of even-number years, with 238 confirmed cases in 2018, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet in 2020 there were just 29.

Call it the upside of life in a pandemic. While several factors could be at work in these downward disease trends, a key driver is almost certainly the various precautions that remain in place for COVID-19, physicians say.

Evidence so far suggests the COVID precautions are helping to keep the flu in check, said Ray Barishansky, deputy secretary of health preparedness and community protection at the state Health Department.

“I do think that the washing of hands, the avoidance of gatherings, wearing masks, these are things that definitely reduce the spread of flu,” he said.

Click here to read the article.