The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this year’s flu season is “moderately severe” with at least 11 million cases of the illness.
Of those 11 million cases, there have been 120,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths so far, Reuters reported.
Those numbers are about double those from the week ending Dec. 28, 2024, and do not account for cases that have not been reported or those who do not seek out flu tests.
The data does not include the holiday period, so the cases could rise, NBC News reported.
The dominant strain is subclade K a substrain of influenza A and H3N2, according to ABC News.
Subclade K started spreading after the strains for this year’s shots were chosen.
CNN said this year has seen the number of doctor visits for flu symptoms climb to levels that have not been seen since the 1997-98 flu season. ABC News noted that this is the earliest data available.
Almost every state has high levels of flu activity except for Montana and Vermont, which had low levels and South Dakota and West Virginia, which had moderate, CNN reported. Nevada did not report any data.
Flu symptoms include, according to the “Today” show:
- Fever
- Chills
- Body aches
- Headache
- Extreme fatigue
- Congestion or runny nose
- Coughing
Doctors are advising people that if they have not yet gotten a flu shot, they should do so now.
But according to CDC data, the number of shots given to adults this year is down when compared to past data.
In 2019-2020, there were nearly 61 million vaccines given. So far this year, there have been 48 million, CNN reported.
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