Spring may have hinted at its impending arrival in recent days, but the flu season isn’t finished with us. And it’s wearing a slightly different face.
After tapering off at the start of the new year, the incidence of flu is on the rise again and now officials are seeing a different strain that swept through the area earlier.
Public health agencies locally and nationwide are reporting an increase in the respiratory woes, headaches, fatigue, fever and body ache that spell influenza. Cases aren’t as widespread as they were earlier in the season, but that comes as little comfort to those knocked off their feet by the virus.
“We have a smaller uptick than we did in December,” said Mary Anderson, infection control manager at Edward Hospital in Naperville, who saw the flu season peak before the end of last year, as it usually does.
Although Naperville School District 203 and Indian Prairie District 204 aren’t seeing student absences on a scale comparable to what they witnessed earlier in the season, it’s an uptick all the same, in Naperville and statewide. The Illinois Department of Public Health counted 97 laboratory-confirmed cases of flu in the week that ended Jan. 17, with numbers going down steadily over the next several weekly surveillance reports, hitting 15 by mid-February. The figures have risen each week since then, reaching 37 by the end of February, agency data shows.
Most cases of flu, of course, do not reach the level of state lab analysis. As of last Friday, Anderson said, Edward Hospital had tested 432 specimens since last fall that came up positive for the flu.
The advice hasn’t changed: stay home if you’re sick, keep your hands clean, don’t cough on other people – and get a flu shot. Call it plan B.
“It seems odd to people, if they’ve already had influenza, that their physician would be saying you should still get a flu shot if you haven’t yet this year,” Anderson said, suggesting it’s a matter of apples and oranges. “As it does some years, the second, smaller peak of influenza is a different strain.”
Accounting for more than three out of four of the flu cases confirmed at Edward since Feb. 1, the most prevalent strain turning up at the downtown Naperville hospital now, influenza B, is not the same one that kicked off the current season sooner than usual, peaking in local schools before Thanksgiving. That one, influenza A, was the H3N2 strain and it proved less resistant than in most years to the seasonal flu shot, which was effective against the earlier strain only 28 percent of the time. Recent tracking figures reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest those who received the shot earlier in the season can breathe a cautious sigh of relief as influenza B gains steam.
“According to the latest data from the CDC, about 75 percent of the B strains that they’ve seen this season are a match with the vaccine,” Anderson said.
The first-wave strain hasn’t gone away, but its late-season successor is gaining prominence beyond Naperville. The weekly report from the CDC released Friday confirmed the trend.
“The 2014–15 influenza season began early and, as of February 21, 2015, activity remained elevated across the United States. Influenza A (H3N2) viruses have been predominant overall, though in recent weeks an increasing proportion of influenza B viruses have been detected,” the report states.
Despite its tenacity, Anderson expects this year’s flu season will be as finite as it usually is. Typically it’s over around the end of March, and she’s optimistic this year will be no different.
“Our hope is that this will be it,” she said. “And pretty soon we’ll be on to the next thing.”
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