State health leaders in Massachusetts are raising concerns about the flu, which is reaching rates that haven't been seen in years.
Over the past few weeks, the state Department of Public Health has continued to report a steady spike in flu cases as hospitalizations and visits for flu-like illnesses tick upward and surpass rates from a few years prior.
During the state Public Health Council’s monthly meeting Wednesday, Commissioner Dr. Robbie Goldstein didn't mince words.
"Over the past few weeks, we've raised our estimated severity level from “High” to “Very High,” as we are getting reports of an increase in cases in our state,” the commissioner said. “In the past week, we've reached a peak of Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) reporting that is higher than we've seen in any of the prior five flu seasons."
Data released a day after the meeting revealed the percent of hospitalizations associated with influenza are up to almost 8.7 percent for the week of February 2 - up nearly a whole percentage point from the week before that and more than double the rate compared to the start of the year.
It's a near identical spike for patient visits for "influenza-like illness," which hit 11.46 percent last week, compared to 5.3 in early January.
That's all to say - there's something going around.
Dr. Esteban DelPilar is an attending physician and associate hospital epidemiologist for Baystate Medical Center. He tells WAMC that as the region grapples with the uptick, it's a far cry compared to earlier in the flu season.
“It's interesting, because, when the flu season started, it was very, very quiet,” he said during a Zoom interview. “I remember doing an interview maybe a month or so ago that - at that time, we really weren't seeing much of any flu at all.”
He says Baystate's confronting its fair share of flu hospitalizations, having seen at least three ICU cases himself last week.
While not a complete picture, state data says there's been at least 10,600 lab-confirmed influenza cases so far, up from 2,300 at the end of December.
DelPilar says the trend echoes the days of the swine flu epidemic over 15 years ago.
“… most of us have been doing this for a while [and] are kind of having a little bit of reminiscence to 2009, when H1N1 first kind of popped its head over in the States, where we had somewhat of a similar caseload,” he said. “And if you look at the CDC data, you'll see that the number of cases and the timing seems to be fairly similar to that flu season back in 2009.”
He says he and other professionals across the state are keeping tabs on the bird flu. However, with only 68 human cases confirmed so far, none in Massachusetts, and no significant signs of person-to-person transmission - it's unlikely that's the culprit.
DelPilar emphasizes causation likely won't be known until after flu season, but right now, he says the state's low flu vaccination rate, 38.5 percent as of Wednesday, isn't helping things.
“Well, that's a horrible number,” he said. “If you look at influenza vaccination, nationwide, it's about 45-ish percent, so, not even half of the population is vaccinated against the seasonal flu.”
Ideally, the doctor says, you want to see a number closer to 70 percent.
As for why that number is so low, there's some speculation that one of the few silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic might have a role.
Around 2020-21, influenza cases dropped to historic lows. During lockdown and heavy masking, an entire strain of flu died off and the disease more or less disappeared for a time.
Its re-emergence a year or so afterward was practically staggered compared to prior years and in the process, may have caused the public to let its guard down.
“I think that people, perhaps, forgot what the flu is and what it can do, so they don't see it necessarily as an important vaccine to get,” DelPilar said. “A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about the vaccine in terms of, ‘Oh, every time I get it, I get sick’ - no, that's not correct [or] ‘Oh, it really doesn't work.’ It works. It might not work as well as you might want it [to], but it does work.”
General mask fatigue also doesn't help.
For now, DelPilar and other experts are reminding the public that flu season is not over and there's still time to get a flu shot.
That, and the classic precautions - stay home if you feel sick and make sure to wash your hands and use hand sanitizers when out and about.
“The best thing that people can do is vaccinate themselves and wash your hands,” he concluded. “I think that after COVID, we were hoping that people learned that lesson, but it always bears good to remind people.”
