Influenza season is shaping up to be a major pandemic in San Diego County, with the latest Respiratory Disease Weekly Report showing that local cases and case counts intensified in late December, pushing the medical community into a new strain of influenza season. It is recorded that it continues to be withdrawn. year.
Last week, 13% of local emergency room patients had flu-like symptoms, a 4-point increase from just one week ago and the highest rate in the same week last season, according to a county health department report. 5 points increase over the observed level.
Don’t get me wrong. This is shaping up to be the most intense flu onslaught since the 2022-2023 season, which spiked in October, months ahead of the typical winter flu surge.
“(Influenza A) drainage activity is higher than the past two years and has increased significantly,” said Dr. Seema Shah, interim deputy public health officer for San Diego County. “We felt like we were a little bit past the flu season, so it’s not at all surprising that there’s a fair amount of flu going around.”
And there was a similar spike in cases this year. of According to the county list, 3,567 positive flu tests were reported in the last week of December, more than a third of the season’s total since July in a seven-day period.
This trend reflects an increase in influenza activity nationwide, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting 18.7 percent of influenza tests. carried out by a clinical laboratory Positive tests were reported nationwide. Temperatures in San Diego County have been rising significantly, reaching 31% last week. It’s unclear how similar San Diego County’s recent population growth is to the rest of the state. The California Department of Public Health has suspended weekly reporting for the last two weeks of December and plans to resume it on January 10th. The CDC characterizes California’s flu activity level as “very high,” as well as Oregon, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee.
Emergency centers and hospital emergency departments are reporting a significant increase in patient visits. Sharp Healthcare, which operates the region’s largest health system, reported a 15% increase in emergency department caseload since Dec. 26, with the largest increases at its Grossmont and Chula Vista hospitals. Ta. Overall, Sharp reported 140 hospitalizations for influenza patients, compared to just 19 hospitalizations for coronavirus patients.
Scripps Health said wait times have increased at its urgent care centers, but the influx of patients has not yet forced overflow procedures, with many patients being treated in tents in parking lots.
It was a similar situation at the University of California, San Diego, said Dr. Marlene Millen, the school’s chief medical information officer for ambulatory care. Although holiday scheduling reduces the number of patients arriving for scheduled appointments, health care facilities remain busy due to the flu.
“Our clinics are a little quieter, but our urgent care, urgent care and emergency departments are busy, but so far they haven’t been busy,” Millen said. “I would definitely say it felt a little more dramatic this year because it went from pretty quiet to suddenly buzzing.”
Some may wonder if this is the H5N1 avian influenza that virologists around the world have been worrying about all fall. Shah said so far there have been no local signs of H5N1 infection among San Diego County residents. Local public health labs regularly test influenza samples to identify genetic subtypes and look for any that come back unrecognized. She explained that these are possible proofs that H5 has appeared.
“That would have caused a lot of alarm, similar to other counties where human cases have been detected,” Shah said. “However, no H5-related human infections have been detected.”
Those who got sick during the holidays may be wondering about the relationship between the symptoms they experienced and the current increase in flu activity.
Experts say people who are sick enough to seek medical attention often develop a fever, chills and body aches – typical signs that distinguish the flu from other viral illnesses. However, on social media, many people are reporting symptoms such as sore throats, persistent runny noses, and nasal congestion that causes coughing, but not necessarily fever or chills. Shah said these are also likely the flu, but what people call colds are caused by a wide variety of viruses.
Vaccination could be a key factor in determining whether a person ultimately experiences a cold-like course or a full-blown battle with the flu, he added.
“We won’t know how compatible the vaccine is until the end of the season, but that could change the severity of the illness that people are experiencing,” Shah said.
That made sense to Mirren.
“We’ve certainly seen some cases of the flu this year that have increased runny noses and sore throats,” Millen said. “We noticed that some people who had the flu but had mild symptoms had been vaccinated.”
Statistics on the vaccination status of all confirmed influenza cases were not available, but even those would be skewed by the fact that mild symptoms are far less likely to be confirmed by a test in the first place. Therefore, the breakdown provided by a health care provider is, by definition, an assessment of someone who has experienced symptoms severe enough to require medical attention.
Scripps Health provided information that reached its extensive network of hospitals and clinics.
“Of the 2,316 Scripps patients who tested positive for influenza between December 1st and January 1st, 697 (30%) were vaccinated through Scripps in 2024,” the medical provider said. said in an emailed statement.
But the organization cautioned that this calculation does not include people who received the vaccine outside the Scripps system, which is the actual percentage of vaccinated patients who become sick enough to seek medical attention. warned that this means it is likely to exceed 30%.
So far this season, local influenza vaccinations are overall lower than in recent years. The county’s vaccine registry records 905,921 doses administered so far this season, compared to just over 1 million doses administered last year and nearly 1.2 million doses administered in the 2022-2023 season. Shah noted that vaccines are still available countywide.
