Flu Season Gets Worse As 35 States Hit

In the U.S., the flu season has begun to get worse with the sickness now spreading into more than 35 states, up from the 25 the previous week, according to the Center for Disease Control that released a report on Friday.

Lyn Finelli an expert on flu with the CDC said in the weekly reports on flu that the season has yet to peak, but it is still too soon to determine if it will be worse than what is considered normal.

Thus far, the numbers are not as high as last year. The amount of people that have visited doctors for flu symptoms climbed to over 4% of all visits to the doctor last week, which was near double from just two week before.

North Carolina health officials reported on Thursday that the death toll due to seasonal flu had increased by 2 to 21. Of the deaths, 19 were young or middle-age adults, of which most had underlying medical conditions. Just two of the deaths reported were in people older than 65.

State officials in health said the flu activity was widespread in many states since the middle of December. The season usually does not peak until late January and into February.

Health officials in Washington said on Friday that the state had 11 deaths this season. King County had accounted for five deaths, which is expected since it is the population center for the state. Last season, there were 54 flu deaths officially reported for Washington.

Officials in Washington said the number of deaths was not unusual but that the department urged everyone older than 6 months to be vaccinated.

In Nevada, there have been five deaths in Washoe County, while two-middle aged people and one elderly person died in Clark County.

Officials said people could still have a flu vaccination. Even though the season peaks in January or February, officials warned that it continues many times into spring.

Besides getting a vaccine, it is recommended that people wash their hands frequently, cover their mouths and nose when sneezing and cough to stop as much as possible the spread of germs.

Bio
Latest Posts

Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.