U.S people now face the flu season this week but no sign yet of a peak in the spread of achy, illness, feverish, coughing according to CDC spokesman. 29 states and New York City reported high levels of flu activity, up from 16 states and NYC the previous week. Flu was widespread in 41 states up from 31 states according from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There’s 2,257 people had been hospitalized with flu and 18 children had died from complications of the illness as the week ending Dec 29 according to CDC reported.
Google Flu Trends, website that monitors flu activity in the U.S and around the world based on internet search terms, this year’s season has already topped the bright-red ‘intense’ category.
Flu Near You, a new real-time tracking tool that’s gaining about 100 participants each week about 4 percent of the 10,000 users say they’ve come down with flu symptoms.
CDC officials said it’s not possible to know whether that’s happening more this season than usual and that the agency is ‘watching the situation closely’. CDC officals said that this year’s vaccines appear to be well matched for the two strains of influenza A and one strain of influenza B that are circulating this year. H3N2 are the dominant strain this year which can cause more serious illness.
This flu seasons can vary widely and hospitalizations of up to 200,000 people and between 3,000 and 49.000 deaths during a season. As December 14, about 127 million doses of flu vaccine had been distributed from about 135 million doses produced for this season.
Source :- NBCNews.com
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