Louisiana grappling with very high levels of flu-like illnesses
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Seasonal virus activity is surging across the U.S. and some health experts expect even bigger bumps going into January.
Two-thirds of states are reporting flu activity that’s high or very high and it’s accelerating. So far, there are 7 million confirmed illnesses, 73,000 hospitalizations and 4,500 deaths related to flu.
Louisiana continues to be hit hard by the flu. On a CDC map from Dec. 29, Louisiana was listed as having the top level, or “very high” category of influenza activity.
The Louisiana Department of Health says emergency department visits went from 11.6% to 14.2% for the week of December 17. The LDH says the highest percentage of flu emergency department visits were among 2-to-4-year-olds (34.3%) and 5-to-11-year- olds (40.2%).
“Yes, very high levels of flu-like illness in Louisiana and in multiple other states across the United States. In fact, almost two-thirds of the states in the United States have high to very high levels of flu-like illness resulting in more cases and more hospitalizations,” said Dr. Fred Lopez, an infectious diseases specialist at LSU Health New Orleans.
Dr. Lopez says the flu vaccine is a good match for the strain of the flu that is circulating.
“It’s always a retrospective analysis to see just how effective the flu vaccine is but based on data from the southern hemisphere and what we’ve been seeing here so far it looks like a pretty good match for the strains that are circulating in the United States, meaning that in the vaccine are the strains that are causing illness in the United,” said Lopez.
Lopez and LDH stress that it is not too late to be vaccinated against the flu.
“Absolutely not. I’m glad you brought that up because people feel we’re in the throes of this, there’s no reason to get it now but remember flu season is all the way from October to May and even if you’ve already had the flu, you should go get a flu shot.”
The surge in influenza-like illness is happening as COVID-19 and RSV continue to sicken people.
Lopez said, “It’s like a triple threat. We’ve got COVID going up causing more hospitalizations, we’ve got flu going up and RSV seems like it may have plateaued in some areas of the United States but still, levels of activity that are quite significant, and yet we still hear data that people are not availing themselves of the vaccine.”
At Castellon’s Pharmacy in New Orleans, pharmacist and co-owner Scott Beninato says customers with upper respiratory illnesses are coming in to get prescriptions filled and are buying over-the-counter medications.
“Everything, lot of bronchitis, a ton of bronchitis. We’re filling syrups, tablets, capsules, antibiotics,” said Beninato. “We haven’t seen so much the flu, we have a couple of scripts of the flu but just the general upper respiratory type stuff. We’re seeing more of that than anything.”
Lopez says mitigation measures used for COVID-19 are effective against other respiratory viruses.
“It’s why they were on the wane during the height of the pandemic because people were masking, they were distancing, they were isolating when they got infected. All of these kinds of things worked to decrease the transmission not just of COVID-19 but also of all of those other respiratory virus illnesses, I know people don’t necessarily want to hear it,” he said.
And he said it is not too late to get the COVID and RSV vaccines.
“Less than 50% of adults have availed themselves of the flu vaccine, less than 20% of the adults who are eligible for the RSV vaccine have availed themselves of the RSV vaccine and less than 20% have availed themselves of the COVID-updated vaccine,” Lopez stated.
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