Flu season: ‘It’s still not getting any better out there’

The flu, now in its third month in Texas, continues to intensify, according to a state report whose latest numbers show the highest activity in recent years.

Nearly 14.5 percent of hospital and doctor visits the last week of January were for symptoms of the flu, according to the Texas department of health. That is up from the season’s previous high of 14 percent the third week of December and the last few years’ previous high of 14.17 percent in 2014-2015. The rate is considered the best barometer of the severity of a flu season.

“It’s still not getting any better out there, and we don’t know if it’s going to continue to go up or down,” said Lara Anton, spokeswoman for the state health department. “People need to keep practicing flu prevention. It’s not too late to get a flu shot if you haven’t already.”

The state’s overall flu death tally is 2,897, according to the report, up from 2,355 two weeks ago. The vast majority of those are the elderly.

There have been five pediatric deaths in Texas, none in Houston. Nationally, there have been 53 pediatric flu deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Friday, the CDC reported 16 such deaths the past week as part of an update showing the season is worsening around the country. It said hospitalization rates for the flu are the highest since such figures began being tracked in 2010.

Generally, said federal officials, the U.S. season is on track to be the worst since the swine flu pandemic of 2009.

The intense current season is widely attributed to the prevalence of the H3N2 strain, considered the most dangerous and hardest to vaccinate against. The strain, which hit the Southern Hemisphere hard before getting to the United States in late fall, also caused previous high numbers in Texas and the nation in 2014-2015.

It is not the only flu strain circulating. H1N1 and two milder B strains also are present and have begun to constitute a bigger portion of the flu being confirmed in laboratory tests by the state and at some local sites, such as the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. H3N2 remains the dominant strain, though.

Houston’s health department reported a decrease in area ER visits for flu-like symptoms in late January — from 12.9 percent to 8.9 percent — though experts said that may just be because people have got the message to go to a clinic or doctor’s office if their illness isn’t life-threatening. Flu visits were overcrowding ERs early in the month.

Though the national flu season begins in October and goes through May, Houston’s is typically most active in January through March. There had been some hope the current season might taper off earlier because it started earlier, but experts said Friday the latest numbers provide no evidence of that yet.