Heard on All Things Considered – Flu season is off to a rough start this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the virus arrived as expected, cases are rising faster, compared with previous years.
Last week, more than 19,000 patients with influenza were admitted to hospitals, up about 10,000 from the previous week, according to new CDC data.
To date, the CDC estimates at least 7.5 million people have been sickened, and over 3,100 people have died from the flu.
The surge seems to be driven primarily by a new strain of the virus — subclade K of influenza A(H3N2) — that emerged in Australia over the summer.
“Anywhere we detect this virus, you can see a large surge of influenza cases coming afterwards,” says Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In the U.S., “the timing is not that much different from other flu seasons, but the number of cases, and how quickly those cases are increasing is something that is not usually seen this time of year.”
New York has been hit especially hard, with state health officials announcing over 71,000 cases last week — the most cases ever recorded in a single week in the state.
But other states are seeing high levels of flu activity, particularly in the northeast, midwest and south.
“The map is mostly red,” says Pekosz, indicating high levels of disease that will likely increase over the coming weeks …
