Will We See a Winter COVID Surge, and How Could It Impact Holiday Travel?

With COVID-19 cases surging in Europe and Asia, there are new concerns that the U.S. could see a similar spike just as we head into the holiday travel season.

So should you book your travel plans now, or hold off until you see how the next few weeks go?

We asked Boston doctors for their thoughts during NBC10 Boston's weekly series, "COVID Q&A," and here's what they had to say:

"So my big concern right now is that we would have the twindemic that we've been really worried about, which is a time when we have an increase in COVID-19 cases at the same time as we're having to deal with influenza, and that this may potentially overwhelm our healthcare services," said Dr. Sabrina Assoumou of Boston Medical Center. "So we often look at what's happened in the southern hemisphere to foreshadow what it is that we will actually see here in the U.S. And if you look at Australia, they actually had an early and a substantial flu season this year with a lot of hospitalization. So this is telling us that it is possible that we may actually have a lot of cases, so my message is if you haven't yet, please get your flu vaccine, because especially this year, this is how you can help us as healthcare workers so that we don't get too many people getting hospitalized from influenza."

As to whether there will be a COVID spike, Assoumou said experts are still trying to determine if the virus is seasonal, whether it has settled into an endemic pattern, and whether it is becoming predictable in any way. And it will also depend on people's behavior.

"Can I tell you that every year you're going to get like, you know, increases in cases at a certain point in time? And actually, I don't know if we're gonna get a new variant that's going to be non-omicron and if that's going to cause a lot of trouble," she said. "But what I do know is that during fall and winter season, when we enter the northeast and we spend more time indoors, we tend to have an increase in cases. So we're probably going to have an increase in cases, but the sort of height of that peak is going to be determined by us, you know, are we going to get vaccinated and are we going to use those public health measures [like] masking indoors in public settings when cases are starting to go up? Because we want to use a layered approach, so that would be sort of my recommendation."

Dr. Gabriela Andujar Vazquez of Tufts Medical Center said she agrees with Assoumou's assessment.

"Personally, I think that we were worried about a flu season last year and thankfully it was not the case. We didn't have as much flu season, although we did have a long flu season till June basically," she said. "And so we're very watchful of what will unfold this next couple of months with both the flu season and knowing that it's likely that we will have not only because of travel, but because of weather, a lot of factors that come into play with a COVID surge."

Vazquez said things that people can do to help mitigate a possible surge is to get vaccinated and boosted and take public health measures like the ones suggested by Assoumou, including masking, hand hygiene and staying home when you're sick.

"Most of my concerns are around capacity also," she said. "Around this time last winter was quite difficult with the COVID surge in Massachusetts, particularly where we we did have an increase in cases and hospitalizations. And so it put a strain on the healthcare system and so we're watchful and preparing to make sure that we are ready to take care of patients if that were the case, but also making sure that we we tell the public to help us out with some of the messages that we know that we can help like vaccination."

"I think none of us can predict," added Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes of Brigham and Women's Hospital. "I completely agree with everything that Dr. Vazquez and Dr. Assoumou said. I think we need to be alert and be willing to take measures to protect ourselves. You know the big infectious disease meetings are taking place starting [Wednesday] morning, and they've insisted that everybody show proof of vaccination to be able to get your badge for the meeting and we're gonna all be masked, I'm going to be masked on the plane flying down."

"So, you know, there are ways that we could mitigate or at least moderate the extent to which we do see a surge this winter," he said. "It doesn't mean that everybody has to go back to being shut-ins, but people need to be sensible in what they do and and scale their activities based on the risk to themselves and to the people in their households, as we've been talking about."