NEW YORK (AP) – February is usually the height of the flu season, with doctors’ offices and hospitals full of suffering patients. But not this year.
Flu has all but disappeared from the US, with reports coming in at much lower levels than ever before.
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Experts say the measures taken to ward off the coronavirus – mask wearing, social aloofness, and virtual education – were a big factor in preventing a “twindemic” of the flu and COVID-19. An attempt to get more people vaccinated against the flu also likely helped, as did fewer people traveling, they say.
However, flu-related hospitalizations are only a fraction of what they would have, even during a very mild season, said Brammer, who oversees the CDC’s tracking of the virus.
Flu death data for the entire U.S. population is difficult to collect quickly, but CDC officials are keeping a running count of childhood deaths. One childhood death from flu has been reported so far this season, compared to 92 at the same point in last year’s flu season.
“Many parents will tell you that their children have been as healthy this year as they have ever been, because they don’t swim in the germ hole in the same way in school or daycare as in previous years,” said Mick.
Some doctors say they’ve even stopped sending samples for testing because they think no flu is present. Nonetheless, many labs use a CDC-developed “multiplex test” that checks specimens for both the coronavirus and the flu, Brammer said.
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More than 190 million doses of flu vaccines have been distributed this season, but the infection rate is so low that it’s difficult for the CDC to do its annual calculation of how well the vaccine works, Brammer said. There just isn’t enough data, she said.
That’s also a challenge for planning the flu vaccine for next season. Such work usually begins with identifying which strains of flu are circulating around the world and predicting which of them are likely to prevail in the coming year.
“But there aren’t many (flu) viruses to look at,” Brammer said.