Is Pennsylvania's flu season worse so far than the deadly 2017-18 season?
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — In terms of diagnosed flu cases, the 2022-23 flu season has started off worse than any other during the past decade – and it's not even close.
That includes the 2017-2018 flu season, one of the worst in memory when the U.S. CDC estimated 52,000 Americans died of the flu – and when the unvaccinated masses panicked mid-season and ran to get shots, pharmacies were out because of the sudden demand.
So do this year's early-season stats – more than 23,000 diagnosed cases in Pennsylvania last week alone, compared to fewer than 1,000 for the equivalent week nearly every other year, including 2017-2018 – portend more hospitalizations and deaths than in that awful year?
Not necessarily.
"Influenza season has started early this year for sure," said Dr. Debra Bogen, director of the Allegheny County Health Department, an observation corroborated by state health officials and emergency room doctors.
But Bogen said the only thing the high number of positive tests can tell with certainty is that a high number of people are testing positive. It doesn't tell us conclusively that more people than have actually have the flu, because far more people are getting tested now than in the past – particularly sick children, whose parents take them to get tested for Covid-19 and RSV and who get tested for the flu at the same time.
Positive tests are one measure of the severity of flu season. What ultimately matters more are flu-related hospitalizations and deaths. So far, no one in Allegheny County is confirmed to have died this season of the flu, although the worst of flu season is still typically weeks away.
Again, though, Bogen doesn't dispute that the season hasn't started well.
Dr. Anthony Guarracino, chair of emergency medicine at UPMC Harrisburg, can confirm that. The past few years were different because of the pandemic – 2020-2021 saw historically few flu cases, hospitalizations and deaths because, public health officials said, the same measures people were taking to avoid Covid-19, such as masking and social distancing, were also preventing the spread of the flu.
"But even previous years in the last five or 10 years when flu was prominent, this year is definitely worse," Guarracino said.
And perhaps the most important thing of all is true also of both viruses.
"The people we're seeing (in the hospital) who have the flu haven't been vaccinated, by and large," Guarracino said. As with Covid vaccines, doctors say flu shots don't prevent everyone from catching the flu.
"We base the flu vaccine on what we see in Australia and [southern] Asia," whose winter is during America's summer, said Chuck Kray, owner and a pharmacist at Hershey Pharmacy. "It's not an exact science, but your body does get enough general protection from the dosage that even if you got a strain that's not related, at least it's going to give you some resistance to it."
"Really the key is to prevent the bad outcomes – the hospitalizations and deaths," Bogen said.
She said flu shots are particularly important for senior citizens, pregnant women and small children – children at least six months old are eligible.
Kray said not only is it not too late to get a flu shot, but there's such a thing as getting one too early – in August, for example – because the vaccine begins to wear off after several months. Alas, it's no longer too early: Public health officials, doctors and pharmacists are urging all unvaccinated Pennsylvanians to get their shots now.
Just as the same actions that prevent Covid-19 from spreading can prevent the flu from spreading, the same opposite actions can cause both to spread.
"As it has gotten colder, we're moving indoors, and we're a lot closer together," said Dr. Denise Johnson, Pennsylvania's physician general and acting secretary of health.
