California under the weather
Lodi area and beyond facing a bad flu season
This year’s flu virus is hitting California hard, and San Joaquin County is no exception.
The county’s Public Health Services has received reports of three flu-related deaths among people younger than 65, and 12 others were admitted into intensive care units. Six outbreaks have been reported in long-term care facilities, the agency said in a press release.
Adventist Health Lodi Memorial has seen an uptick in flu cases this year.
“When comparing last year at this time with this year, our volume in both the emergency department and the hospital has increased significantly,” said Janelle Meyers, Lodi Memorial’s director of public relations. “Our daily average ER volume has increased by approximately 23 percent, and daily average inpatient volume has increased by about 20 percent, both which are partially due to the flu.”
It’s had a little more time than usual to take hold this year.
“It’s certainly started a lot earlier, even here in San Joaquin County, compared to previous years,” said Dr. Karen Furst, San Joaquin County’s public health officer.
The county was receiving reports of flu cases in October, before the usual drive to vaccinate had gotten into full swing and weeks before the flu season generally begins. At this time last year, the county had seen only three ICU cases, two deaths, and three outbreaks, Furst said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors influenza activity in weekly reports throughout the flu season. Thousands of lab-verified cases of flu have been reported around the country, and flu activity in California was considered widespread, the agency reported. Cases of suspected influenza are even higher.
Seven pediatric flu-related deaths were reported in the most recent report, for the week ending Jan. 6. A total of 20 children have died so far this flu season.
The rate of flu hospitalizations — the number of people hospitalized with flu per 100,000 — nearly doubled earlier this month from 13.7 one week to 22.7 the next, the San Jose Mercury News reported. And for the first time in 13 years of mapping, the CDC shows flu activity throughout the entire continental United States.
This year’s dominant influenza strain seems to be harsh.
An influenza A strain known as H3N2 is making people so ill in California that thousands have shown up in recent weeks at hospitals struggling to fight the infection.
“I was flat on my back and in bed for 10 days,” Ana Oktay told the Los Angeles Times. “This has been hands down the worst flu I’ve ever dealt with.”
Oktay, who lives in L.A., rushed to the hospital in late December with a 102-degree fever and a cough that wouldn’t quit. She thought she had pneumonia, but it was H3N2.
The huge numbers of sick people are also straining hospital staff who are confronting what could become California’s worst flu season in a decade, the Times reported.
Hospitals across the state are sending away ambulances, flying in nurses from out of state and not letting children visit their loved ones for fear they’ll spread the flu. Others are canceling surgeries and erecting tents in their parking lots so they can triage the hordes of flu patients.
Staff members at Torrance Memorial Medical Center have been working long hours to care for a swell in sick patients that began in late December, infectious disease specialist Dr. James McKinnell told the Times. Some patients are incredibly ill with multiple strains of the flu, or the flu and pneumonia.
“There’s a little bit of a feeling of being in the trenches. We’re really battling these infections to try to get them under control,” McKinnell said. “We’re still not sure if this is going to continue ... but it certainly is an inauspicious start.”
At Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, hospital staff noticed flu cases were mounting and started clearing out an area that was being used as storage.
And Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz recently reintroduced rules they hadn’t used since the swine flu, or H1N1, pandemic in 2009. People younger than 16 — who are considered more likely to spread the flu — aren’t allowed to visit people at the hospital, and patients can have only one visitor at a time, said hospital president Dr. Nanette Mickiewicz.
“As we did during H1N1, we pulled out the same policies,” she told the L.A. Times. “We’ve been treating almost five times the number of influenza patients that we typically see.”
Several hospitals in California are treating flu patients in so-called “surge tents” intended for major disasters.
“With the increase in influenza impacting many communities across the entire state, it is important to get a flu shot now if you have not done so already,” Dr. Karen Smith, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a news release on Jan. 9. “Although influenza season usually peaks between December and February, flu activity can occur as late as May, which means it is not too late to get vaccinated.”
It takes about two weeks for the vaccine to be effective, doctors said.
Doctors won’t know until February how effective the vaccine is this year — it can vary in effectiveness depending on the dominant strain of influenza. However, getting vaccinated will prevent a number of cases and can make flu symptoms less severe in others, Smith said.
“Getting the flu shot is still the best way to protect yourself and others from flu,” she said.
The flu season typically lasts into March or longer, and getting vaccinated will help to prevent the spread of at least some strains of the flu.
The vaccine is less effective for seniors, though Furst emphasized that they should still be vaccinated. She stressed that anyone who spends time around seniors — especially in long-term care facilities and retirement homes — should be vaccinated to prevent the spread of influenza within those places. That includes both staff and visiting family members or friends.
The vaccine also cannot be given to infants under six months of age, Furst said.
“To really protect those people, everyone around them really needs to be vaccinated,” she said.