{"id":98,"date":"2020-10-21T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=98"},"modified":"2020-11-08T22:29:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T22:29:22","slug":"are-flu-cases-going-up-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Are flu cases going up too?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Question:<\/strong> What are the rates of flu right now? Is the flu going up as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer: <\/strong>CDC keeps track of seasonal influenza spread in the US and shares its findings here<\/a>. As of the latest data \u2014 week 41, ending 10\/10 \u2014 \u201cSeasonal influenza activity in the United States remains low.\u201d Only two states have moderate levels of influenza activity \u2014 West Virginia and Iowa. It\u2019s still way too early in the flu season to make heads or tails of influenza rates for the 2020\u201321 season. We\u2019d expect flu to be low in October (see recent trends in Figure 1<\/strong>) and to be increasing as the flu season progresses. In the meantime, we can look at recent influenza trends in the US over the Spring\/Summer \u201cinterseasonal\u201d period and also look at recent trends from the southern hemisphere, which already experienced the height of this year\u2019s influenza season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good news! According to a report recently published<\/a> in CDC\u2019s MMWR<\/em>, \u201cthe percentage of U.S. respiratory specimens submitted for influenza testing that tested positive\u2026 has remained at historically low interseasonal levels (0.2% versus 1\u20132%). Data from Southern Hemisphere countries also indicate little influenza activity.\u201d Scientific American<\/em> published a short piece on this very topic<\/a> a few weeks ago, quoting Greg Poland, an influenza expert at the Mayo Clinic who stated, \u201cNever in my 40-year career have we ever seen rates \u2026 so low.\u201d He goes on to describe how continuation of key public health measures could lead to the most dramatic drop in influenza cases in modern history (see Figure 2 <\/strong>for trends from South America). Even so, please go get your flu shot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1. Seasonal Influenza in the USA, Week 41 of 2020\u201321, 2019\u201320, and 2018\u201319 influenza seasons <\/strong>(from CDC<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 2. Seasonal Influenza trends in South America <\/strong>(from Scientific American<\/em><\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: What are the rates of flu right now? Is the flu going up as well? Answer: CDC keeps track of seasonal influenza spread in the US and shares its findings here. As of the latest data \u2014 week 41, ending 10\/10 \u2014 \u201cSeasonal influenza activity in the United States remains low.\u201d Only two states have moderate levels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-influenza","category-trends","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/October-21.png?fit=1139%2C929&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}