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Tag: flu-like illness

  • Flu Season Ends Not With a Bang but a Whimper

    Flu Season Ends Not With a Bang but a Whimper

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    March 10, 2023 – The 2022-23 flu season lingered through the second half of January and most of February at the edge of its defined existence, but it now appears to be over.

    For the CDC, the annual epidemic known as flu season “occurs when flu activity is higher than a CDC-defined ‘baseline’ value.” That value, expressed as the proportion of all outpatient visits involving influenza-like illness to health care providers in the U.S. Outpatient ILI Surveillance Network, is currently 2.5%.

    Over the last 6 weeks, the national figure has been between 2.6% (Feb. 19-25), and 2.7% (Jan. 15-21). In other words, it has lingered like no flu season has lingered before, at least not since the CDC began setting a national baseline in 2007-08.

    But for the week of Feb. 26 to March 4, outpatient flu-like illness visits represented just 2.4% of all visits, the CDC’s Influenza Division reported, dropping under the baseline for the first time since the first week of October 2022.

    Back then, the early start to the flu season raised concern about a “tripledemic” involving respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19. But by the time the flu season peaked, RSV activity had already started declining and the expected COVID surge never occurred, CDC data shows.

    Since the start of the 2022-23 season, the United States has had at least 26 million flu illnesses, 290,000 hospitalizations, and 18,000 deaths, 125 of which were child deaths, the CDC estimates.

     

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  • Flu Cases Fall, But Not Admissions and Deaths

    Flu Cases Fall, But Not Admissions and Deaths

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    Editor’s note: See cold and flu activity in your location with the WebMD tracker.

    Jan. 9, 2023 – New cases of the flu in the United States continue to decline as flu-related outpatient visits to doctors offices and hospitals fell for the fifth straight week as 2022 ended, according to the latest CDC data. 

    While good news, the number of hospital admissions for flu and flu-like illnesses held steady. 

    Outpatient visits for flu-like illness made up 5.4% of all visits to health care providers during the week of Dec. 25-31, according to data from the CDC’s Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network. That is down from 6.0% the previous week and down from what seems like a seasonal peak of 7.5% in late November, based on the CDC Influenza Division’s latest FluView report.

    The CDC’s surveillance network defines influenza-like illness as fever plus cough or sore throat, not laboratory-confirmed flu, so the data includes other respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). But the language in the FluView report makes it clear that the CDC puts the emphasis on the flu.

    State-level data confirms the national drop: Only 12 jurisdictions were at “very high” flu activity for the week of Dec. 25-31, compared with 24 the week before. (Jurisdictions include the 50 states, as well as territories, New York City, and the District of Columbia.) Another step down shows that the number of metro areas with very high activity fell from 59 to 37, the CDC said.

    Despite the declines in outpatient visits, hospital admissions remained right around 19,000 for a second straight week after a 2-week downturn, based on data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Protect platform.Another measure not showing improvement was the proportion of deaths due to the flu, which was higher for Dec. 25-31 (1.63%) than either of the 2 previous weeks (1.53% and 1.6%), according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics that were included in the CDC report.

    Total deaths during the 2022-23 flu season number around 14,000 so far, with hospitalizations at 230,000 and illnesses around 22 million. Among the deaths reported during the latest week were 13 in children, and the total number for the season is now at 74, the CDC said.

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  • Flu Activity Falls for the Fourth Straight Week

    Flu Activity Falls for the Fourth Straight Week

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    Editor’s note: See cold and flu activity in your location with the WebMD tracker.

    Jan. 3, 2023 – The 2022-23 influenza season got off to a fast and rather nasty start in October and November, but December brought a drop in infections instead of the usual surge, according to CDC data.

    “Seasonal influenza activity remains high but is declining in most areas,” the CDC’s Influenza Division said last week in its weekly FluView report.

    Nationally, 6.1% of outpatient visits for the week ending Dec. 24 were for influenza-like illness. Since that rate hit 7.5% in late November – the fastest start to a flu season since 2009 – activity has dropped for 4 consecutive weeks, the CDC said. 

    In 2009, the outpatient visit rate reached 7.7% in mid-October, but activity dropped quickly after that, falling to less than 3% by the end of November, CDC data show.

    As with the number of outpatient visits, hospital admissions are already on the decline as well. The weekly number of flu-related hospitalizations reached 26,000 in early December but has fallen for 3 straight weeks and was down to just under 19,000 for Dec. 18-24, according to data from nearly 4,900 hospitals to the Department of Health and Human Services.

    The CDC estimates the total number of flu hospitalizations to be 210,000 through the first 11 weeks of the 2022-23 season. There have been an estimated 20 million illnesses and 13,000 deaths from the flu so far in the United States, with 61 of those deaths in children. By comparison, there were 44 pediatric deaths from the flu during the entire 2021-22 season, only one in 2020-21, and 199 in 2019-20, the CDC said.

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  • Flu Hospitalizations Drop Amid Signs of an Early Peak

    Flu Hospitalizations Drop Amid Signs of an Early Peak

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    Dec. 16, 2022 – It’s beginning to look less like an epidemic as seasonal flu activity “appears to be declining in some areas,” the CDC said this week.

    Declines in a few states and territories were enough to lower national activity, as measured by outpatient visits for influenza-like illness, for the second consecutive week. This reduced the weekly number of hospital admissions for the first time this season, according to the CDC Influenza Division’s weekly FluView report.

    Flu-related hospital admissions slipped to about 23,500 during the week of Dec. 4-10, after topping 26,000 the week before, based on data reported by 5,000 hospitals from all states and territories.

    The weekly hospitalization rate tumbled from 8 per 100,000 people to 4.5 per 100,000, which was still higher than any other December rate from all previous seasons going back to 2009-10, CDC data shows. 

    Visits for flu-like illness represented 6.9% of all outpatient visits reported to the CDC during the week of Dec. 4-10. The rate reached 7.5% during the last full week of November before dropping to 7.3%, the CDC said.

    There were 28 states or territories with “very high” activity for the latest reporting week, compared with 32 the previous week. Eight states – Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Washington – and New York City were at the very highest level on the CDC’s 1-13 scale of activity, compared with 14 areas the week before, the agency reported.

    So far this season, the CDC estimated there have been at least 15 million cases of the flu, 150,000 hospitalizations, and 9,300 deaths. Among those deaths have been 30 reported in children, compared with 44 for the entire 2021-22 season and just one for 2020-21. 

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  • U.S. Sees Most Flu Hospitalizations in a Decade

    U.S. Sees Most Flu Hospitalizations in a Decade

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    Editor’s note: See cold and flu activity in your location with the WebMD tracker.

    Dec. 12, 2022 – The number of Americans hospitalized because of the flu has hit the highest levels the country has seen in at least a decade, the CDC said Friday. 

    But the number of deaths and outpatient visits for flu or flu-like illnesses was down slightly from the week before, the CDC said in its weekly FluView report.

    There were almost 26,000 new hospital admissions involving laboratory-confirmed influenza over those 7 days, up by over 31% from the previous week, based on data from 5,000 hospitals in the HHS Protect system, which tracks and shares COVID-19 data. 

    The cumulative hospitalization rate for the 2022-23 season is 26.0 per 100,000 people, the highest seen at this time of year since 2010-11, the CDC said, based on data from its Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network, which includes hospitals in select counties in 13 states.

    At this point in the 2019-20 season, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the cumulative rate was 3.1 per 100,000 people, the CDC’s data shows.

    On the positive side, the proportion of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness dropped slightly to 7.2%, from 7.5% the week before. But these cases from the CDC’s Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network are not laboratory-confirmed, so the data could include people with the flu, COVID-19, or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). 

    The number of confirmed flu deaths for the week of Nov. 27 to Dec. 3 also fell slightly from the last full week of November, 246 vs. 255, but the number of pediatric deaths rose from two to seven, and total deaths in children are already up to 21 for 2022-23. That’s compared to 44 that were reported during all of the 2021-22 season, the CDC said.

    “So far this season, there have been at least 13 million illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 7,300 deaths from flu,” the agency estimated.

     

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  • Flu Season Raged Over Thanksgiving

    Flu Season Raged Over Thanksgiving

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    Editor’s note: See cold and flu activity in your location with the WebMD tracker. 

    Dec. 2, 2022 – The flu virus made the most of the Thanksgiving holiday by reaching the highest level of national activity seen since the 2017-18 influenza season, according to the CDC. 

    The biggest 1-week increase in what is becoming an unprecedented flu season had flu-like activity at 7.5% for the week of Nov. 20-26, as measured by the proportion of outpatient visits reported to the CDC that involved respiratory illness, which may also include respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19.

    That 7.5% is the highest level of flu-like activity recorded in the United States since early February 2018, at the peak of the 2017-18 flu season, and the highest rate recorded in November since the CDC began tracking such data in 1997. Flu-like activity reached 7.7% in October of 2009 but then dropped below 7% by the first week of November and did not rise again for the rest of that season, the CDC’s data shows.

    There are more signs of a worse flu or flu-like season this year.. The total hospitalization rate for confirmed cases of flu, 16.6 per 100,000 people, is higher than the rate seen at this point in the season during any season since 2010-2011, the CDC said.

    The high rate of hospitalizations from Nov. 20-26 is nearly double the the previous week’s numbers, the CDC noted in its weekly Fluview report.

    So far this season, the CDC estimates, “there have been at least 8.7 million illnesses, 78,000 hospitalizations, and 4,500 deaths from flu.” In 2018-19, the last full influenza season before COVID, there were 148 deaths through the first 8 weeks, based on CDC data.

    Flu-like activity at the state and territory levels, which the CDC categorizes on a scale range from 1-13 – from minimal (1-3) to very high (11-13) – puts 31 states at very high for the week, compared with 19 the week before. Only New Hampshire and the Northern Mariana Islands are in the minimal range, according to the CDC.

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  • U.S. Flu Activity Already at Mid-Season Levels

    U.S. Flu Activity Already at Mid-Season Levels

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    Nov. 29, 2022 – Reports of respiratory illness continued to rise as the 2022-23 flu season maintained its early surge through mid-November, according to the CDC. 

    Nationally, 6% of all outpatient visits were because of flu or flu-like illness for the week of Nov. 13-19, up from 5.8% the previous week, the CDC’s Influenza Division said in its weekly FluView report.

    Those figures are the highest recorded in November since 2009, but the peak of the 2009-10 flu season occurred even earlier – the week of Oct. 18-24 – and the rate of flu-like illness had already dropped to just over 4.0% by Nov. 15-21 that year and continued to drop thereafter.

    Although COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are included in the data from the CDC’s Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network, the agency did note that “seasonal influenza activity is elevated across the country” and estimated that “there have been at least 6.2 million illnesses, 53,000 hospitalizations, and 2,900 deaths from flu” during the 2022-23 season.

    Total flu deaths include 11 reported in children as of Nov. 19, and children ages 0-4 had a higher proportion of visits for flu like-illness than other age groups.

    The agency also said the cumulative hospitalization rate of 11.3 per 100,000 population “is higher than the rate observed in [the corresponding week of] every previous season since 2010-2011.” Adults 65 years and older have the highest cumulative rate, 25.9 per 100,000, for this year, compared with 20.7 for children 0-4; 11.1 for adults 50-64; 10.3 for children 5-17; and 5.6 for adults 18-49 years old, the CDC said.

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  • Is It a Surge? Flu Season Gains Strength Before Holidays

    Is It a Surge? Flu Season Gains Strength Before Holidays

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    Editor’s note: See cold and flu activity in your location with the WebMD tracker. 

    Nov. 21, 2022 — The 2022-2023 flu season continues its early start as respiratory illness activity climbed to levels typically seen in January or February, according to a new report from the CDC. 

    One important measure of the season’s severity, the proportion of outpatient visits involving influenza-like illness (ILI), rose to 5.8% for the week of Nov. 6-12. The last flu season to have such high activity so early was 2009-10, when visits for flu-like illness hit 7.7% in mid-October, the CDC’s data shows. That same season, visit levels quickly dropped and were back to normal by the beginning of January.

    As with so many other things, however, the emergence of COVID-19 has brought about changes in how flu activity is measured. 

    About a year ago, the CDC changed the definition of flu-like illness to exclude specific mention of flu itself, which has brought COVID-19 and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) into play, since with both patients often have fever plus cough or sore throat. All three viruses are being monitored by the CDC’s Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network, which monitors outpatient visits for respiratory illness.

    As the CDC monitors flu-like illness, a potential wild card is emerging research showing these viruses don’t play well together. 

    Researchers in Canada reported in February that the flu virus interferes with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and helps prevent the coronavirus from replicating itself. The opposite is true, as well, where the coronavirus can interfere with the flu virus, the researchers reported in a study published in the journal Viruses.

    Likewise, there is evidence that rhinoviruses, which cause the common cold, may interfere with the coronavirus. 

    What this means, some experts believe, is that it’s unlikely all three viruses would peak at the same time, overwhelming the health care system. 

    Despite the change in the CDC’s tracking definitions, activity during the 2021-22 flu season was below average: The national flu-like illness rate never reached 5% and fell below the current national baseline (an average of the last three non-COVID flu seasons plus 2021-22 and selected weeks of 2019-20) by the end of January.

    That does not seem to be the case in 2022-23. 

    “So far this season, there have been at least 4.4 million illnesses, 38,000 hospitalizations, and 2,100 deaths from flu,” the CDC said in the weekly report from its Influenza Division, while also noting that the rate of hospital admissions “is higher than the rate observed [at the same point] during every previous season since 2010-2011.”

    Among those 2,100 influenza-associated deaths this season are seven children. That is more than occurred through 6 weeks of the 2021-22 season, when the first of 44 total deaths didn’t occur until week 8, and through the entire 2020-21 season, when there was only one. In the three flu seasons before that, there were 199 (2019-20), 144 (2018-19), and 188 (2017-18) children who died from the flu, the CDC said.

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