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While
influenza activity is currently very low in the United States, it is getting
started -- and there's enough to indicate that there will be at least some
kind of flu season this
year, unlike last year, when an emphasis on frequent handwashing,
mask use, closures of schools and businesses, and social distancing pretty
much shut down transmission of the virus. It's
always impossible to predict what a flu season will look like, but Lynnette
Brammer, lead of the CDC’s Domestic Influenza Surveillance team, said reports
of more flu cases have caught her team's attention and have her thinking flu
season may have returned after its one-year break. "Overall,
flu activity is still really low. It's starting to creep up just a little
bit," Brammer told CNN. The CDC
estimates that, depending on the season, flu kills anywhere from 12,000 to
61,000 people a year in the United States. Last
week, the CDC confirmed it was helping state and local health officials in
Michigan investigate an outbreak of more than 500 cases among students at the
University of Michigan. That's the biggest single outbreak so far. Flu in
the new Covid world has health experts on alert. The National Academy
of Medicine, an independent body that advises the US federal
government on matters of medicine and health, said in a report last week:
"Yet, from an epidemiological perspective, COVID-19 does not represent a
'worst-case' pandemic scenario, such as the 1918-19 influenza, which resulted
in at least 50 million deaths worldwide.” The
next influenza pandemic could kill 33 million people, the Academy said. "Influenza
pandemics have occurred repeatedly, and experts worry that the risk for an
influenza pandemic may be even higher during the COVID-19 era due to changes
in global and regional conditions affecting humans, animals, and their
contact patterns. While it is difficult to predict when it will occur, a
major influenza pandemic is more a matter of 'when' than 'if,' " the
authors added in their report. |
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