The US is in the throes of an unusually intense and severe flu season, with hospitalization rates topping the levels seen with Covid-19 at some points of the pandemic. <\/p>\n
On top of the flu infection itself, doctors say they\u2019re seeing large numbers of patients with some of its most devastating complications. <\/p>\n
In children, specialists say they\u2019re seeing more than usual come to the hospital with neurologic complications, including devastating brain swelling that leads to tissue death \u2014 a condition called acute necrotizing encephalopathy, or ANE. <\/p>\n
In adults, <\/strong>there are unexpected levels of <\/strong>pneumonia caused by flesh-eating superbug bacteria. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a lot of MRSA pneumonia and really bad MRSA pneumonia after influenza, so what we call necrotizing, where you\u2019re getting a lot of destruction of the lung tissue,\u201d said Dr. John Lynch, an infectious disease specialist at UW Medicine. <\/p>\n MRSA is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a type of bacteria that shrugs off a lot of the antibiotics available to treat it. The infection can be deadly, but a person who survives this kind of pneumonia may also have scarred lungs, diminishing the ability to breathe normally during everyday activities. <\/p>\n Bacterial pneumonia infections commonly follow the flu, especially for older adults. Doctors think they\u2019re seeing more of these cases this year simply because the season is so busy. Still, they say, it\u2019s unsettling. <\/p>\n On social media, people who identified themselves as critical care nurses say their intensive care units are packed with sick flu patients who\u2019ve progressed to pneumonia and respiratory failure. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re getting so many people in their 40s just absolutely getting wrecked by the flu,\u201d one person who described themself as a nurse from Maryland wrote on Reddit. <\/p>\n They\u2019re not the only places getting hit hard. <\/p>\n During the week ending February 1, there were 14.4 flu hospitalizations for every 100,000 people in the US, slightly higher than the rate of Covid-19 hospitalizations during the height of the Delta wave in September 2021, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. <\/p>\n Flu hospitalization rates this season are still about half of what they were during the very peak of the Covid pandemic, in the Omicron wave in 2022 \u2013 but it\u2019s the first season that there have been more cumulative hospitalizations for flu than for Covid. <\/p>\n There have been about 64 flu hospitalizations for every 100,000 people so far this season, according to CDC data through February 1, compared with about 44 Covid hospitalizations for every 100,000 people. Last season, there were about 2.4 times more hospitalizations for Covid than for flu. <\/p>\n Weekly deaths from flu have also surpassed those from Covid for the first time, CDC data shows. There were 1,302 deaths from flu in the last two weeks of January, compared with 1,066 deaths from Covid. <\/p>\n From coast to coast, flu activity is very high, according to the CDC, with about 1 in every 3 people who are given a flu test in a clinic or hospital getting a positive result. <\/p>\n At some clinics in Washington, as many as half of patients who are tested are positive, Lynch said. <\/p>\n \u201cFifty percent positivity is really high,\u201d he said. \u201cReally mind-blowing.\u201d <\/p>\n This week, Dr. Keith Van Haren, a pediatric immuno-neurologist at Stanford Medicine, posted a request for information on ANE cases to a service run by the International Society for Infectious Diseases, wrote that he and others in parts of the US have noted what appeared to be a sharp increase in cases this year. <\/p>\n Doctors are not required to report ANE cases to public health departments and there\u2019s no official tally of the typical number that are reported year-to-year, so it\u2019s hard to tease out trends. <\/p>\n In discussions with his colleagues, however, Van Haren and his Stanford colleague Dr. Andrew Silverman are hearing about an increase in severe flu cases in children. Members of his team say they\u2019ve heard of about 35 to 40 <\/strong>ANE cases over the past two flu seasons at university hospitals, and Silverman said most of those have been this season. <\/p>\n ANE is brain swelling that may occur as the result of a number of viral infections, including the flu. Studies suggest that it\u2019s fatal in about half of cases. <\/p>\n When the brain swells inside the hard shell of the skull, it can have devastating consequences. With ANE, the swelling results in the death of tissue in a specific area called the thalamus, which controls sleep and wakefulness. Children who have this complication develop intense drowsiness and have a hard time staying awake. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s sort of like blowing up a balloon in a cardboard box. It can only expand so much before something breaks,\u201d Van Haren said. <\/p>\n Van Haren says he knows that the next question is whether this could involve bird flu. Cases of H5N1 bird flu have been sporadically reported in humans in a dozen states, mostly in people who work on farms. <\/strong>\u201cIt does not appear to be bird flu,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Dr. James Antoon, a pediatrician at Monroe Carell Jr. Children\u2019s Hospital at Vanderbilt, said workers there have seen one case of ANE this year. <\/p>\n Beyond ANE, Antoon said they\u2019ve noticed an increase in a range of neurologic complications in children with the flu, including seizures. <\/p>\n It\u2019s too early to say whether these are outside the numbers they would expect, though. <\/p>\n In a typical flu season, Antoon said, they might expect to see four cases of seizures for every 10,000 children under 5 who have the flu. Rates of encephalopathy, or brain swelling, are even rarer: about 1 for every 100,000 children with the flu, he says. Those numbers sound small, but when multiplied over millions of flu cases, they add up. <\/p>\n \u201cWe expect there to be more complications when we have more cases of influenza,\u201d Antoon said, \u201cand so we would expect, with a bad in the season like this, to see more neurologic complications.\u201d <\/p>\n Dr. Ryan Maves, a critical care medicine specialist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said the intensity of this flu season feels like the 2009 influenza pandemic, which was triggered by a new virus, H1N1, that emerged in Mexico and rapidly spread worldwide. <\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of the sheer volume in the hospital, I mean, the hospital is full,\u201d Maves said. \u201cWe\u2019re not spilling into the parking lot, but the hospital is very full, and we\u2019re seeing things that I hadn\u2019t personally seen in a few years,\u201d such as adult patients who need ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation therapy, with which machines take over for the work of the heart and lungs to buy the body time to recover. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have this happen every few years, where we have a particular strain of influenza that is challenging for us,\u201d said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. <\/p>\n This year, two influenza A strains are causing misery \u2014 H1N1 and H3N2 \u2014 and what\u2019s unusual is that they seem to be sharing the stage in roughly equal amounts. <\/p>\n \u201cA lot of times, you see a strong predominance of one or the other, and right now it\u2019s split nearly 50\/50,\u201d said Dr. Jennifer Nayak, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center. \u201cIt\u2019s not the typical thing that we see.\u201d <\/p>\n At the same time, fewer than half of adults and children have had a flu shot this year. <\/p>\n About 44% of adults have been immunized against the flu, a level that\u2019s stayed steady for the past several years. Vaccine coverage for kids has dropped by nearly 14 percentage points, falling from 58% before the pandemic to 44% this year. <\/p>\n That\u2019s a trend that worries doctors. <\/p>\n This virus season, 57 children have died from the flu. \u201cThat\u2019s relatively high for this time of year, for sure,\u201d Nayak said. Most of them have been unvaccinated. <\/p>\n \u201cKeep in mind that every year, somewhere between 100 and 150 children die of influenza, and that\u2019s just in a regular run-of-the-mill year,\u201d Creech said. \u201cThat\u2019s a devastating number when we have a vaccine that can prevent those severe outcomes.\u201d <\/p>\n With two strains circulating in roughly equal amounts, Creech said he\u2019s heard of patients infected with one strain of the flu who recover, only to catch the other just a few weeks later. <\/p>\n \u201cImmunity to one of them does not give you immunity to the other in any sort of durable way,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is why we vaccinate, because you don\u2019t know which flu you\u2019re going to be exposed to.\u201d <\/p>\n To be clear, Creech said, the vaccine won\u2019t keep you from catching the flu. <\/p>\n Creech got his shot this year and still had influenza last week. But his infection was \u201cway more mild\u201d than the flu he had in 2009, before the H1N1 vaccine was available. That time, his temperature hit 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and his son\u2019s was 106. <\/p>\n If you\u2019re reading this news and feeling helpless, don\u2019t. There are things you can do to lower your risk of a bad case of the flu. <\/p>\n First, if you forgot your vaccine, there\u2019s still time to get one, Creech said. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you get it right now, it takes about a week for an adult, maybe 10 days, for there to be a really good boosting of the immune response,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Experts anticipate at least another month to six weeks of bad flu before things get better. Even then, it\u2019s not uncommon to see a bump in flu B, which leads to a spring peak. <\/p>\n \u201cSo right now, we\u2019re seeing a truckload of H1N1, we\u2019re seeing this H3N2, and now influenza B is going to come around for a spring meet and greet, so now is a reasonable time to do it,\u201d Creech said. <\/p>\n It\u2019s too early to know how completely this year\u2019s flu vaccine protects against the circulating strains. Some preliminary testing, in which viruses from patients put in a test tube with blood from vaccinated ferrets, suggest that the vaccine may be better matched to the H1N1 viruses than the H3N2 variants that are floating around. <\/p>\n So don\u2019t rely on the vaccine alone for protection. Cleaning indoor air and ventilating spaces, washing your hands and wearing a high-quality mask in crowded places can help, too. <\/p>\n Finally, test yourself if you get sick. Over-the-counter home tests for flu are available at many pharmacies and grocery stores, in addition to tests at doctor\u2019s offices. <\/strong>Antiviral drugs can lower the risk that your infection will become severe, and they work best if you take them early on. <\/p>\n \u201cAll the similar things we\u2019ve talked about with Covid, the same goes true for influenza,\u201d Nayak said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n The US is in the throes of an unusually intense and severe flu season, with hospitalization rates topping the levels seen with Covid-19 at some points of the pandemic. On top of the flu infection itself, doctors say they\u2019re seeing large numbers of patients with some of its most devastating complications. In children, specialists say …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":547,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Doctors warn of brain complications in kids<\/h2>\n
Hospitals are full and busy<\/h2>\n
There\u2019s still time to protect yourself<\/h2>\n
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