The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Source: USA TODAY
Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:25 PM
Severe Flu Still Widespread Across Nation As Baby Boomers Become Hardest Hit Age Group
The country is in the coast-to-coast grips of a severe flu season, on track to be as bad as the outbreak that caused an estimated 56,000 deaths in 2014-2015, federal health officials said Friday.
The flu remains widespread in 49 states, and reports of flu-like illnesses continued to rise through the third week of January, according to an update released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It has been a tough flu season,” and may
be only half over, said Dan Jernigan, director of the CDC’s influenza
division.
While the CDC gets reports of flu deaths among children — up to 37 now —
the biggest flu impact has been on people over age 65, followed by those
ages 50-64, Jernigan said.
Flu trackers do not keep exact counts of adult deaths, but flu
hospitalizations are higher among people in their fifties and early
sixties this year than among young children, who usually are
hospitalized at a rate only surpassed by the over-65 age group, he said.
“Baby boomers have higher rates than
their grandchildren right now,” he said.
The reason for year to year age shifts are complex, but can include
vaccination rates and the mix of viruses in circulation.
Still, “we expect there will be additional reports of pediatric deaths,
similar to what we’ve seen in other severe seasons,” Jernigan said. He
noted that in the 2014-2015 flu season, 148 child deaths were reported.
Last year, the number was 110, and the year before that, it was 92. In
2009-2010, the country had a rarer “pandemic,” in which a new flu virus
took an especially high toll on children, killing 288.
Jernigan said the current season looks most like 2014-2015, when 34
million people got the flu, 710,000 were hospitalized and an estimated
56,000 died.
One unusual feature of this year’s flu is that it has stayed widespread
across the country for three weeks running, instead of popping up in one
region and then another. Geographic spread does not indicate severity,
but as of Jan. 20, 39 states were still reporting high levels of
flu-like illnesses. And 6.6% of people seeing doctors anywhere in the
country had flu-like symptoms — the highest that measure has been since
the pandemic year nearly a decade ago, Jernigan said.
There were some signs of improvement in certain areas, he said. Notably,
he said the flu onslaught may have peaked in hard-hit California.
Jernigan and CDC director Brenda Fitzgerald repeated calls for people to
protect themselves and others by getting the flu vaccine, staying home
when they are sick and washing their hands.
The very young, the very old, pregnant women and people with underlying
conditions — such as asthma and heart disease — are at highest risk from
flu and should seek treatment if they get sick, Jernigan said.
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