Flu Arrives To Kick Off Holidays: What To Know About VA, DC Cases

VIRGINIA — Flu is soaring in seven U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, as flu season starts ahead of schedule and just as families across the country gathered for Thanksgiving dinner celebrations.

Cases are starting to climb in Virginia, which had a low level of influenza as of Nov. 11, according to the Virginia Department of Health. State officials said 3.4 percent of emergency room and urgent care visits were flu cases.

New flu data posted Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control showed very high activity last week in Louisiana, and high activity in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico and South Carolina. It was also high in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory where health officials declared an influenza epidemic earlier this month.

Flu activity was moderate but rising in New York City, Arkansas, California, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. And while flu activity has been high in Alaska for weeks, the state did not report data last week, so it wasn't part of the latest count.

“We’re off to the races,” Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious diseases expert, told The Associated Press.

Typically, the flu season ramps up in December or January. Last year, the flu season started early and hard, burdening hospitals that were also seeing high numbers of the respiratory illness known as RSV and COVID-19.

Tracking during flu season relies in part on reports of people with flu-like symptoms who go to doctor's offices or hospitals; many people with the flu are not tested, so their infections aren’t lab-confirmed. COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses can sometimes muddy the picture.

Alicia Budd, who leads the CDC’s flu surveillance team, said several indicators are showing “continued increases” in flu.

There are different kinds of flu viruses, and the version that's been spreading the most so far this year usually leads to a lesser amount of hospitalizations and deaths in the elderly — the group on whom flu tends to take the largest toll.

So far this fall, the CDC estimates at least 780,000 flu illnesses, at least 8,000 hospitalizations and at least 490 flu-related deaths — including at least one child.

Budd said that it’s not yet clear exactly how effective the current flu vaccines are, but the shots are well-matched to the flu strains that are showing up. In the U.S., about 35 percent of U.S. adults and 33 percent of children have been vaccinated against flu, current CDC data indicates. That's down compared to last year in both categories.

Flu vaccination rates are better than rates for the other two main respiratory viruses — COVID-19 and RSV. About 14 percent of adults and 5 percent of children have gotten the currently recommended COVID-19 shot, and about 13.5 percent of adults 60 and older have gotten one of the RSV shots that became available earlier this year.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.