As we cruise into the Christmas and New Year's holidays, a word of warning: do your best to avoid needing an emergency room.
The Minnesota Department of Health is reporting nearly 2,000 cases of influenza across the state, with more than 500 hospitalized. The highest cases among children aged 4 and younger and adults 65 and older.
And that has emergency rooms and urgent care centers absolutely packed with people suffering from symptoms according to University of Minnesota Doctor Phoebe Smith.
"One of the catch-22s of being sick is you're often very contagious that first day, when those symptoms are either really mild or barely noticeable, right," says Dr. Smith, speaking to Susie Jones on WCCO's Health Hour Sunday. "So, you do your best you can, but once you really start to notice you're sick, it's that first three to four days that you're going to be contagious after those symptoms start."
She says if you have a fever, it's best to stay home.
"If you have a fever, you really want to be 24 to 48 hours without a fever to feel safe going out around other people," Smith adds.
She also says making sure you are fully healthy before resuming normal activities is crucial - or you may just end up needing to head to an ER or urgent care.
"There's also this thing that can happen where if you, you start to feel better, you have a couple of days where you're like, 'I think I'm really, really getting better,' and then suddenly it takes a turn for the worse," says Dr. Smith. "You get a new fever, you're feeling much more sick. That could be a sign of a bacterial infection, a sinus or a pneumonia. And so that's when you'd probably want to go in as well."
Smith explains that anyone struggling to catch your breath or having significant pain in your chest should go into the doctor for sure.
Smith says make sure to wash your hands and wearing a mask if you're flying over the holidays - and she says if you're sick, consider canceling plans.
She says people need to be considerate of others.
"I think it's always important to think about who is gonna be there, right? If there's gonna be any little babies, if there's gonna be any family members that are immunocompromised, you know, because of health conditions, or they're just, you know, older and have some asthma," Smith says.
She says children and older adults seem to be getting hit worse than others.
Flu cases ramp up nationwide
The CDC estimates there have been 4.6 million flu cases across the U.S. since the season began. 1,900 patients have already died from it.
Dr. Amanda Kravitz is a pediatrician at Weill Cornell in New York City and she explains what people should be on the lookout for.
"This flu season is no joke," Kravitz explains. "We are seeing more cases than we would expect for this time of year. Specifically, we're seeing Influenza A, and within Influenza A, we are seeing a subtype or variant called H3N2. There are tons of these cases throughout the country, and it is causing a very, very severe flu."
Doctor Benjamin Abella is the chair of emergency medecine at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City.
"It's certainly important to wash hands," he says. "It's certainly important to wear masks if you are sick or if you're immune compromised, and probably in most cases in public, and it's not too late for the flu shot. This surge though has been much larger than we've seen in past years. Flu shots are effective and safe for people as young as 6 months of age. We definitely recommend the flu shot. It is not too late, and it can greatly reduce the risk of serious disease and even hospitalization."
Rhode Island, Louisiana, and New York are some of the states seeing very high levels of flu activity.