An early start to the flu season means it may be time to consider a flu vaccine.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP
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Rebecca Blackwell/AP
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Fall has only just begun, but it’s already time to start thinking about the ultimate winter virus: the flu.
The annual flu season usually begins in October or November. But this year, it seems like the flu started spreading in early September.
“There are enough signs pointing in the same direction to make me think, ‘OK, yes. It’s the start of flu season,'” says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The percentage of people testing positive for the flu in the West has been steadily increasing since around early September, she says. And the number of people showing up to emergency rooms because of the flu has also been increasing for weeks, she adds.
“It’s very rare to see flu activity increase this early. This is activity that we might normally see more in November or December,” she says.
The timing of flu season isn’t the only strange thing. It is also unusual that flu activity appears to have started in Western states, such as California, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska.
“It usually starts in the south and then spreads from there,” Rivers says. “So there are two unusual developments there.”
Rivers points out that flu activity is still very low in most parts of the country. But that’s starting to change as the flu spreads across the country.
It is unclear why flu activity would have started so early and in such an unusual region of the country. But one clue could be a new variant that has developed a mutation, which appears to allow it to better evade existing immunity, particularly among adolescents.
“That’s our best argument for what’s happening right now when it comes to this first flu season,” says Dr. Alex Greninger, a virologist who directs infectious disease diagnostics at the University of Washington. Doctors are seeing as much flu right now as they usually would around Christmas, and the mutated variant appears to be common, he says.
So Greninger, Rivers and others are urging people to think about getting a flu shot earlier than usual.
“It’s crucial that people get the flu vaccine,” says Scott Hensley, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “And this could be a year where people might want to get vaccinated sooner.”
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t promoted the flu vaccine as it usually does. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the CDC, is a longtime vaccine skeptic.
“It is disappointing that the CDC remains silent given that influenza kills hundreds of children a year and can lead to tens of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths,” says Dr. Demeter Daskalakis, who resigned last year as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protest what he called political interference at the agency.
The CDC declined to make an official available to NPR for this story. In a statement, a CDC spokesperson said: “CDC is developing a communications strategy to provide clear and accessible information about flu vaccination and other critical steps people can take to protect themselves during respiratory virus season. This includes information about the benefits and risks of vaccination to support informed decision-making. »
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