Achoo! You may not have heard much of that so far this flu season, but experts say it's coming. The US flu season has started slowly, but a new viral strain has emerged, causing concern among health experts, according to CDC data.
Last winter brought one of the deadliest flu seasons this century, with higher than normal hospitalizations and deaths attributed to disappointing vaccination rates.
Eighteen thousand people died from the flu or flu complications last year -- and experts say this could be a repeat of that because while vaccines are down a new variant of the flu has struck.
"I think we’re going to see a really severe season," Asefeh Faraz Covelli of the George Washington University School of Nursing told The Independent.
Experts say most reported flu infections this year have been a version of the type A H3N2 virus, which typically strikes older Americans the worst. But more than half of the reported flu cases are a new subclade K variant.
The same strain already caused Japan to declare an influenza epidemic, The Hill reported. Preliminary analysis suggests this year's flu shots may provide at least partial protection against the new strain, but the exact effectiveness is still being determined.
"I think it does look as if it has sort of escaped some of our prior immunity, and therefore we’d expect more cases, and maybe that’s why we’re seeing them more early in the season than what we would usually see,” Cameron Wolfe, a professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at Duke University, told The Hill.
The numbers aren't in yet for flu vaccinations this season, but the National Institute of Heath reported in 2023 – 2024, only about 45% of US adults over the age of 18 were vaccinated against influenza, two percentage points lower than in 2022. Vaccination rates against COVID-19 are declining, with only about 6% of children and 14% of adults up to date on their shots.