#flu 2018

The flu season looks to be a bad one this year, and many states are already reporting over ten deaths per state due to the flu. So here is your reminder today to:

Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly

Cover your cough

Sneeze into a tissue

Drink plenty of fluids

If you’re sick, please PLEASE stay home and away from others... as someone with a compromised immune system I cannot stress enough how important it is to help protect others. Please!

If you feel like you’re coming down with something, go see a doctor right away

Consider getting the pneumonia vaccine if you haven’t already. This will help prevent complications from the flu, since the flu shot does not appear effective this year

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/flu-season-strikes-after-a-slow-start/

Flu Season Strikes After a Slow Start

After a slow start, influenza is beginning to take hold across the U.S. The good news is that it’s unlikely to be as bad as last season, when almost 80,000 Americans died. The bad news is that there’s a long way to go.

During the last week of December, some 4.1 percent of doctor visits in the U.S. were because of flu-like illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly report known as FluView. In terms of severity, that’s right in the middle of the four previous flu seasons.

Hardest hit thus far has been the southern U.S., covering a ten state sweep from South Carolina all the way to New Mexico and even up to Utah. Another pocket of virulence has been growing in New Jersey and New York City. So far, there’s been minimal to low levels of disease across most of the northern half of the country.

But there are several months left in the season.

“It’s too soon to say what direction it will go,” said Lynnette Brammer, head of the CDC’s domestic influenza surveillance team. Influenza typically peaks between December and February, and there’s no accurate way to call the top, she said.

“We know right now we are going up, we just don’t know when it will start coming back down,” she said in a telephone interview.

Still, there are positive signs compared with recent epidemics. This season started a bit more slowly and it’s not picking up as fast as last year, Brammer said. The dominant strain currently circulating, called H1N1, is less likely to affect the elderly—a particularly vulnerable group—and it tends to be more sensitive to vaccination. The dominant strain circulating last year, H3N2, was especially hard to stop.

“Last year was a record bad year,” Brammer said. “Our mortality estimate was one of the highest, if not the highest, we’ve seen.”

Hospitals were setting up tents and triage units in parking lots, as the more aggressive strain took hold across the country. While the virus itself wasn’t more deadly than normal, there was just markedly more of it circulating, she said.

A slow season this year will be good news for insurers. Seven of the largest U.S. companies reported paying out almost half a billion dollars because of last season’s flu, according to Jason McGorman, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

“It wasn’t that it was a particularly bad virus that if you got it you were more likely to die than in previous years. There were just a lot more cases,” Brammer said of last season. “When you have a lot more people get sick, you have more people who are hospitalized and more people who die.”

That’s not happening this year—so far. The number of deaths in the U.S. attributed to pneumonia and influenza stood at 6.1 percent in the week ending Dec. 22, below the epidemic threshold, the CDC reported. So far, 11 children have died this season because of an influenza-related illness.

That underscores the most crucial piece of information at this point, Brammer said. “The main thing right now is to get vaccinated,” she said. “There is still plenty of flu season to come.”

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/flu-season-georgia-where-is-the-flu-getting-bad-cdc-says-7-children-have-died-as-flu-season-starts/

FLU SEASON GEORGIA: Where is the flu getting bad: CDC says 7 children have died as flu season starts

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Where is the flu getting bad: CDC says 7 children have died as flu season starts

Seven children have died from influenza as more cases of flu and flu-like illnesses are being reported, leading researchers at the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention to declare that the 2018-2019 influenza season has started.

>> Read more trending news

Sustained elevated cases of influenza that have been reported in the past few weeks in spots across the country have led the CDC to not only declare the start of flu season but to remind people it’s not too late to get an influenza vaccination.

>> 11 things parents need to know about the flu, the vaccine, how long kids need to stay out of school

The flu type seen most often so far this year is the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A strain of the illness.

Seven pediatric deaths have been reported to CDC so far this season, according to the agency. The latest pediatric influenza-related death, reported last week, was associated with an influenza A infection. The other pediatric deaths have been associated with a mix of H1N1, H3N2 and influenza B virus infections. 

Not sure if it’s a cold or the flu? @CDCgov shows how you can tell the difference. https://t.co/LfXc40GXgT #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/IflWZLMOmL

— HHS.gov (@HHSGov) December 26, 2018

Influenza A is one of four types of influenza viruses and is the most common flu type. H1N1 is a subtype of influenza A. 

This time of year is typically when the CDC begins to see an increase in flu activity.

Georgia, Alabama, California, Delaware, Massachusetts and New York have reported widespread flu activity, with another 37 states reporting either local or regional outbreaks of flu, the CDC reported.

Georgia and Colorado have reported the largest numbers of flu activity. States with “moderate” activity include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, South Carolina, Virginia and New York City.

According to the CDC, most of this season’s flu activity has been driven by illness in school-aged children. Hospitalization rates among children younger than 5 years old are now the highest among all age groups, the agency reported.

Latest CDC FluView report shows most #flu activity so far caused by H1N1 viruses, but in the last three weeks, H3N2 flu viruses have been most common in the southeastern region of the country: https://t.co/d7ZpbN4Iaw pic.twitter.com/DOlY8BVeBa

— CDC Flu (@CDCFlu) December 26, 2018

The CDC tracks information about the spread of the flu using data sent from state health departments to create and maintain an influenza surveillance map. The map shows the number of flu cases reported to each state’s health department and where the flu is hitting the hardest.

Below are the links to each state’s health department, where localized information about influenza can be found. Click on the website and look for a listing called “Surveillance Reports,” or “Surveillance Maps,” then look for the week’s report to give you the latest information.

Click here for more information on the H3 strain of the flu, and here for information for parents about children and the flu.

A sign advertising flu shots is displayed at a Walgreens phramacy in San Francisco, California. A strong strain of H3N2 influenza has claimed the lives of 74 Californians under the age of 65 since the flu season began in October of last year.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

© 2018 Cox Media Group.

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