Flu season is making an early appearance in New York this year, with cases rising steadily during the past month.
The state health authorities have already logged more than 10,000 flu cases this season — and that is almost certainly a significant undercount because only people with positive laboratory tests are counted.
The state’s health commissioner, Dr. James McDonald, declared last week that flu was prevalent in New York State. Such a pronouncement wasn’t made last year until December.
Data from the city’s health department shows that in recent days, flu cases were especially prevalent in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and on Manhattan’s East Side, from Gramercy Park to the Upper East Side.
Across the city, flu infections were climbing rapidly among children, with more positive laboratory tests for children in a recent week than among adults between the ages 18 and 64.
While flu cases have risen steadily in recent weeks, they have not spiked dramatically. That could soon change.
Dr. Michael Phillips, the chief hospital epidemiologist for NYU Langone Health, said that in recent days the percentage of patients in his system whose flu tests have come back positive has more than doubled, from 3 percent to 8 percent. “It really has been a bump up,” he said.
The dominant flu strain in the United States this season is called H1N1, and public health experts point to a mutation that could decrease the effectiveness of the flu shot.
Dr. Roy Gulick, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said that the flu shot would still probably provide a degree of protection, even with the mutation in the virus. He encouraged people not to wait to be vaccinated, noting that some people delay getting a shot to ensure that protection remains robust deeper into winter.
“The advice is often to wait till the end of October,” he said. “This year, that is not going to be the right advice.”
“People should get their flu shot as soon as possible,” he added.
That message seems to be resonating. A month ago, 13 percent fewer flu vaccinations had been administered across New York State than at the same time last year. But a lot of people got their flu shot in October. By last week, vaccinations were outstripping last year’s rate, with nearly 3 percent more doses being administered compared with last season, according to data provided by the state Health Department.
There are more flu shots to choose from this year. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first mRNA flu vaccine, though it is authorized only for people 50 to 64.
MRNA technology — which came to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic — instructs the body to produce a fragment of a virus to trigger an immune response. Other flu vaccines rely on a weakened form of the virus or an inactivated version. Public health experts hope that mRNA flu vaccines will allow for annual shots to be better matched against the strain of flu circulating.
Dr. Andrea Howard, the deputy commissioner of disease control for the New York City Department of Health, said that more than 260,000 children in the city had received flu shots so far this season, which is similar to the number at this time last year. Health officials said that at the current pace, about 40 percent of children citywide would get a flu shot by the end of winter.
Last flu season generated a wave of illness in New York City in December that sent nearly 10,000 people to emergency rooms in a single week.
“It was like a flu bomb went off in New York,” Dr. Phillips recalled. The flu strain that was dominant last season, known as H3N2, had acquired mutations that helped it evade the body’s disease-fighting system. In New York City, it led to a relatively short flu season — from November through January — with the pronounced spike in December.
The post Flu Arrives Early in New York, With Cases Rising Rapidly in Children appeared first on New York Times.
