ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It’s not uncommon for illness to spike after Labor Day, and Monroe County is seeing some of that now.

COVID cases are on the rise in Monroe County – even more so than compared to last year at this time, according to Dr. Marielena Velez de Brown, acting commissioner of public health for Monroe County.

Right now, about 150 to 160 people are hospitalized in Monroe County for COVID. Dr. Velez de Brown says there’s a lot of community immunity with COVID.

“We expect the numbers to go up as we go from early fall into winter, kind of reach its peak anywhere between December or January, and then come down in March. That’s the typical shape of our respiratory infection curves and we would hope that COVID would follow that same projection,” she said.

Dr. Ed Walsh heads URMC’s Infectious Disease Unit. He says if you haven’t had COVID recently – in the last four months or so – you should get the current COVID vaccine.

“Because it does match quite nicely right now [with] what’s circulating. Last year’s COVID vaccine is really outdated considering what’s circulating right now,” Dr. Walsh said. “What is clear is that this newer increase is associated with these new variants. These variants known as the flirt variant simply [have] to do with genetic changes that have been identified in the strain.”

The federal government will be making four free tests available per household this season. You can order at the end of September here.

Doctors also advise you check to see if old COVID tests have expired.

As for the flu, doctors say it’s too early to predict how it will affect us.

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