Flu kills the most children in 5 years
Season is never officially ‘over,’ CDC warns
A brutal flu season is finally on its last legs, but it has taken a heavy toll, including the highest death count among children in five years.
Low levels of “flu-like illness” are still popping up in a few spots, according to the latest report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the coast-to-coast epidemic of midwinter is history.
“We never officially declare flu season over. … There’s always flu circulating, even in the summer,” said Lynnette Brammer, head of domestic influenza surveillance at CDC. But, she said, the flu has done most of its nasty work — for now.
The CDC has estimated that a severe season can kill up to 56,000 people, hospitalize up to 710,000 and sicken up to 35 million.
This season “may have been worse than that,” Brammer said. She said the agency will have to do some more number crunching to know for sure.
This was a season that reminded people that the flu can be serious, especially for the very young, very old and chronically ill.
But all kinds of people got sick. “We did have a couple of scares with some very sick younger people, in their 30s and 40s,” said Melisa Lai-Becker, chief of the emergency department at Cambridge Health Alliance Everett Hospital near Boston. Lai-Becker, a spokeswoman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, said she still sees flu patients.
She said some people who got flu shots still got sick, but they got less sick than people who skipped the shots. That backs up published studies.
“This year, we saw a lot of healthy children and adults lose their lives to flu or be hospitalized for flu,” said Serese Marotta, chief operating officer of Families Fighting Flu, a non-profit group that promotes flu vaccination and receives funding from vaccine makers. “I hope that people don’t forget about that. I hope that when it comes time to get vaccinated for 2018-2019, they remem- ber how severe this flu season was.”
Marotta, who lives in Syracuse, N.Y., lost her 5-year-old son, Joseph, to the flu in 2009.
The CDC recommends annual flu vaccines for everyone older than 6 months, generally starting in September.
Flu vaccines typically prevent 40% to 60% of flu cases. This year’s versions were just 36% effective overall, but 59% effective in children, according to preliminary data.
This harsh flu season increased interest in a “universal” flu vaccine that would work against multiple strains for multiple years. On Friday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Lucy and Larry Page announced a $12 million donation to accelerate development efforts.
An imperfect vaccine “doesn’t mean you don’t get the flu vaccine,” and the tail end of flu season doesn’t mean you stop watching out for germs that can make you sick, said Rade Vukmir, a professor of emergency medicine at Temple University. They are out there year-round, he said, “so keep washing your hands.”