{"id":494169,"date":"2026-10-13T01:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T01:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/494169\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T01:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T01:52:08","slug":"san-diego-county-sees-early-rise-in-flu-hospitalizations-and-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/494169\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego County sees early rise in flu hospitalizations and deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flu season usually starts picking up in San Diego County around the beginning of November. But this year, the county is already seeing higher than normal flu <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegocounty.gov\/content\/dam\/sdc\/hhsa\/programs\/phs\/Epidemiology\/SDC_Respiratory_Virus_Surveillance_Report.pdf\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">activity<\/a>, according to the latest Respiratory Virus Surveillance report.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe&#8217;ve already seen eight deaths, which is four times more than we were this time the last three years,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegocounty.gov\/content\/sdc\/hhsa\/programs\/phs\/public-health-officer-.html\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Dr. Sayone Thihalolipavan<\/a>, the county\u2019s public health officer.<\/p>\n<p>All eight people who died were over 50 years old, and six had not been vaccinated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe usually tell people to \u2018get vaccinated for flu before boo,\u2019 meaning that we want people to get vaccinated by Halloween, so they are protected,\u201d Thihalolipavan said.<\/p>\n<p>Flu vaccines are effective at preventing infection 40% to 60% of the time, he said. And even if you get the flu, the vaccine can still make symptoms milder.<\/p>\n<p>The main circulating strain circulating in San Diego County is H1N1, according to county data.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don&#8217;t really know why the flu season has started earlier this year, but we do know that we&#8217;re here, and we know that, thankfully, the circulating strains are ones that are in the vaccinations, so there is and should be \u2026 a good match this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The county is also using a new forecasting tool, developed with UC San Diego Resilient Shield <a href=\"https:\/\/resilientshield.ucsd.edu\/\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">program<\/a>, to predict hospitalizations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is telling us that the next two weeks are predicted to be higher in terms of hospitalizations and more severe,\u201d Thihalolipavan said. \u201cSo while we don&#8217;t know the whole rest of the season, we do know that it&#8217;s going to get worse before it gets better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Flu can also affect the cardiovascular system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/flu\/highrisk\/heartdisease.html\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">association<\/a> between getting flu and these other things, like heart attacks,\u201d Thihalolipavan said.<\/p>\n<p>He said the body\u2019s response to fighting the infection can cause inflammation, which may put extra stress on the heart.<\/p>\n<p>It is not too late to get vaccinated, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The county recommends flu vaccination for everyone six months and older. Shots are available through healthcare providers, pharmacies and county public health centers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flu season usually starts picking up in San Diego County around the beginning of November. But this year,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-494169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}