update<\/a> published Tuesday with data through December 20. At least eight children have died from flu this season.\n <\/p>\n\n Among the states with the highest levels of flu activity are Colorado, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York and South Carolina, according to the CDC.\n <\/p>\n
\n Trends are increasing across key surveillance metrics: Laboratory testing, outpatient health care visits, hospitalizations and mortality are all higher than they were in the previous weekly update from the CDC.\n <\/p>\n
\n One surveillance system shows that flu hospitalizations have doubled; more than 19,000 people were admitted to the hospital with flu during the most recent week, up from about 9,900 the week before.\n <\/p>\n
\n The CDC says that \u201cseverity indicators remain low at this time, but influenza activity is expected to continue for several weeks.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Influenza A(H3N2) viruses are the most commonly reported, and additional genetic testing suggests that a new flu variant \u2014 called subclade K \u2014 appears to be behind the vast majority of cases in the US. After driving high case numbers in other parts of the world, subclade K got the nickname \u201csuper flu.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis is a strain that\u2019s different than what we\u2019ve seen in previous years,\u201d Osterholm said. He wouldn\u2019t call it a \u201csuper strain,\u201d he said, but \u201cI would say it surely does challenge our previous immunity, in terms of protecting us.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n This new variant wasn\u2019t included in this year\u2019s flu shots because it was identified after scientists had chosen the strains to include, but the vaccines contain related strains, and globally, they seem to be working pretty well against the variant.\n <\/p>\n
\n The CDC recommends that everyone age 6 months and older get a flu vaccine each season, but vaccination rates have been decreasing in recent years. Only about 130 million flu vaccines have been distributed this season, CDC data shows, 13 million fewer doses than at this point last year. Additional data suggests that only about 17% of children and 23% of adults had gotten their seasonal flu vaccine by the end of November.\n <\/p>\n
\n Osterholm encourages people who haven\u2019t been vaccinated against flu to act quickly as the virus is \u201cwiping through\u201d the country.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s not too late to get your flu shot,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t guarantee you won\u2019t get flu. It doesn\u2019t guarantee that you still won\u2019t get sick, but it surely is a big improvement on what the otherwise outcome could be, of either being seriously ill or dying.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most US states are experiencing high or very high flu activity, and levels continue to increase nationwide. \u201cFlu…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[102,6591,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-345904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}