Flu season is here to stay.
Strains of the pesky virus are contributing to more cases of the flu than usual, and with the holiday season having just wrapped up, it continues to spread.
“You tend to get peaks around the holidays,” said Michael Rogowski, a physician with M.D. Express. “People are traveling and they spread it around. School starts again and you get another peak because people come to school sick and they spread it around. It’s hard to say how long it’s going to last.”
Rogowski said that while he is seeing people from across the age spectrum coming in to his office — more than 120 on Dec. 26 alone — children and the elderly need to be especially careful as does anyone whose immune system is already depressed.
“We have been very busy,” Rogowski said. “It’s tapered off a little bit, but it’s still much busier than usual. Probably at least half of the people have had the flu.”
The strains making the rounds this year include the H3N2 virus, which has in the past been associated with more extreme flu seasons, according to information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rogowski said the flu can be deceiving as not everybody always displays the classic symptoms — high fever, shaking chills, body aches, runny nose — though they may still be carrying the virus.
The flu shot has been popular choice as a defense against the virus.
“In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been doing 20 to 25 [vaccinations] per day,” said Ken Leary, a pharmacist at the CVS/Pharmacy on Jamestown Road in Williamsburg. “[At this time in a typical year] we probably do not do more than 10 a week.”
Leary characterized the volume of people seeking flu shots as “extremely high” and said it has the biggest turnout he has seen since he began working as a pharmacist in 1991.
One place that has not reported higher than normal activity levels is the York County School Division.
“There is some flu, but it’s not significant where we have a large number of students out,” said Carl James, chief operations officer for York County School Division. He said that on a typical day, 3 to 4 percent of students are not in attendance, and that has been the case throughout the past week.
This year’s flu season has attracted national attention. Officials in Boston have declared a state of emergency because of a high volume of flu cases. An activity map on the CDC website shows every state in the U.S. has reported widespread flu activity with the exception of the Washington, D.C., and eight primarily Western states.
What you can do:
- Get a flu shot. Rogowski said the shot causes your body to produce antibodies that will stay in your system for months, greatly reducing your susceptibility to strains of the virus. He said it takes your body a week or more to begin producing enough antibodies to effectively counteract the virus, so it’s still possible to become infected after receiving a shot.
- Clean and sanitize commonly used surfaces. Rogowski suggested cleaning public items like doorknobs and electronics, especially in the workplace.
- Don’t touch your eyes, nose or mouth. While the virus is airborne, Leary said the primary way people contract it is via hands.
- If you do think the virus is coming on, get to a doctor. Tamiflu, the commonly prescribed antiviral flu medication, is most effective when administered within the first 48 hours of sickness. Still, the flu can lead to pneumonia, a sometimes deadly condition that was responsible for many of the fatalities in past influenza outbreaks. The elderly are especially susceptible to the condition.
- If you are sick, stay inside and minimize your risk of transmitting the virus to others.
- Click here for recommendations from the CDC for staying healthy during flu season.
