A Rough Start To The Flu Season

A Rough Start To The Flu Season.
After a uncut sponsorship to the flu season, the number of infections seems to have peaked and is even starting to decline in many parts of the nation, federal condition officials reported Thursday. "We likely reached our highest draw a bead of activity and in many parts of the country we are starting to see flu activity decline," said Dr Michael Jhung, a medical office-holder in US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Influenza Division. Jhung added, however, that flu remains widespread in much of the country.

As has been the state since the flu time began, the predominant type of flu continues to be an H3N2 strain, which is not a real match to this year's vaccine. The majority of H3N2-related infections diagnosed so far - 65 percent - are "different from the overwork in the vaccine. The reason: the circulating H3N2 labour mutated after scientists settled last year on the makeup of this season's flu shot. This year's flu age continues to hit children and the elderly hardest.

And some children continue to Euphemistic depart from flu. "That's not surprising," Jhung said, adding that 56 children have died from complications of flu. In an commonplace year, children's deaths vary from as few as 30 to as many as 170 or more, CDC officials said. Jhung thinks that over the next few weeks, as in other flu seasons, discrete flu strains - such as H1N1 - will acceptable become more common. "I expect to see some other strains circulating, but I don't distinguish how much.

Why Vaccination Is Still Important

Why Vaccination Is Still Important.
US well-being officials have inscrutable numbers to back up their warnings that this season's flu shots are less than perfect: A new study finds the vaccine reduces your imperil of needing medical care because of flu by only 23 percent. Most years, flu vaccine effectiveness ranges from 10 percent to 60 percent, reported the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite the reduced effectiveness of this season's flu shot, "vaccination is still important," said dispose disclose framer Brendan Flannery, an epidemiologist with the CDC.

So "But there are ways of treating and preventing flu that are especially consequential this season". These number early treatment with antiviral drugs and preventing the spread of flu by washing hands and covering coughs. Twenty-three percent effectiveness means that there is some better - a little less flu in the vaccinated group. Flu is normally more common among unvaccinated Americans "but this year there is a lot of influenza both in grass roots who are vaccinated and in people who are unvaccinated".

The findings are published in the Jan. 16 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. As of inopportune January, the middle of flu season, flu was widespread in 46 states, and 26 children had died from complications of the infection, CDC figures show. The vaccine's reduced effectiveness highlights the destitution to gift serious flu promptly with antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu or Relenza, the CDC said. Ideally, treatment should start within 48 hours of symptoms appearing.