CDC: Bad flu season has peaked in the United States
The flu season, one of the worst in years, has reached its peak and is improving, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. Photo by <a href=”https://pixabay.com/users/exergencorporation-16269701/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=5103354″>ExergenCorporation</a>/<a href=”https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=5103354″>Pixabay</a>
One of the worst flu seasons in years has reached its peak and is improving, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.
Flu activity remains elevated nationally but has decreased for two consecutive weeks as of Feb. 22, the CDC announced.
“Data to date suggests the [flu] season has peaked,” the CDC said. “However, flu-related medical visits, hospitalizations and deaths remain elevated.”
The CDC expects several more weeks of flu activity.
“This season is classified as a high-severity season overall and for all age groups,” the CDC said, adding this season “is the first high-severity season since 2017-2018.”
The percentage of people testing positive for influenza during the week ending Feb. 22 trended downward at 24.5%, which is down from 31.6% during the week ending Feb. 8.
Also lower is the number of patients admitted to hospitals with influenza, 36,555, while the percentage of deaths attributed to the flu remained about the same at 2.8%.
More than six flu hospitalizations for every 100,000 people, which is less than half the rate from two weeks earlier.
The CDC also reported 12 pediatric deaths for the week, which raised the national total to 98 for the current flu season.
An estimated 37 million people have taken ill with the flu this season, resulting in about 480,000 hospitalizations and 21,000 deaths.
The CDC advises everyone age 6 months and older to get an annual influenza vaccine while the current flu season continues and says its target is for 70% of the nation’s population to get an annual flu shot. Only 45% of people got a flu shot this season, though.
The flu vaccine is between 63% and 78% effective at preventing hospitalizations among children and between 41% and 55% effective among adults, according to the agency.
The current flu season is the first to see more flu-related hospitalizations than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Given the high levels of influenza activity and severity in the influenza-associated illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations and deaths,” the CDC report said.influenza,” the CDC said in the report.
A Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee meeting scheduled for March to select the strains to be included in next season’s flu shot was canceled.
Committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, offered no explanation for the scrapped meeting.
Days earlier, a CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting was abruptly postponed.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. maintains he is not anti-vaccine, but he has repeatedly cast doubt on the safety and effectiveness of immunizations and questioned the research and regulations.