Flu season here so far is tame
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Allegheny County Health Department spokesman Guillermo Cole says he doesn't think there's an answer as to why, but he's happy to report that the Pittsburgh area's having a mild flu season to date.
So far, there have been only five confirmed cases -- one believed to have been contracted by someone when traveling abroad -- with just the rest of February, March and perhaps April to go. The regular flu season starts in November of the previous year.
The health department has a rule of thumb that for every confirmed case there are hundreds more out there among people who don't see doctors or who aren't tested by their physicians. Still, "it's categorized as very mild for us and very mild for the nation as well."
Perhaps a more telling statistic than the number of confirmed cases of flu in the county is the percentage of patients going to emergency rooms with flu-like illness, which may have symptoms such as fever, chills, cough, headache and fatigue. That figure is running around 3 percent.
Last year, the rate peaked in mid-February at 8.5 percent. "At any given time during the year outside the flu season, it's 2 percent," Mr. Cole said.
The previous time the rate of influenza was this low, he said, was during the regular 2009-10 flu season, which followed the virulent outbreak of H1N1 flu in the spring and fall of 2009. The H1N1, or swine, flu outbreak peaked in October 2009 at 12 percent of cases seen in emergency rooms with influenza-like symptoms.
"It may go higher," Mr. Cole said of this year's rate. "We'll see more influenza through February and March, sometimes into April. We don't know. If this is the peak, it's not a very high one.
"I like to think people are vaccinated and protected, but we have people vaccinated and protected every year," he said. "It could be this year's vaccine is a really good match for what's circulating right now. I don't think anyone has a real answer" as to why the flu season has been so mild.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agrees.
"As a whole, we've had a pretty mild flu season to date," said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC, which monitors flu activity nationally. "Last week it started to pick up, but we expect it to pick up in February."
He said the influenza virus circulating is considered well-matched to this year's vaccine.
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
