Flu Season

Flu season is officially here. Although there's no indication that the season is shaping up to be a severe one, Baltimore's health commissioner, Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, said yesterday that doctors are reporting increasing numbers of patients with flulike symptoms. In a new system designed to keep the public informed, Sharfstein elevated the city's level of flu awareness from "Minimal Flu" to "Flu Alert," which means there's evidence the virus is spreading. Now is the time, he said, for people to make sure they are vaccinated.

First the flakes, now the flu. That other plague of winter appeared officially in Maryland this week with the first laboratory-confirmed case of Type A influenza. The state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reported yesterday that its lab has isolated the flu bug in a specimen from an unidentified person living in metropolitan Baltimore. Last year's first flu report came much earlier, on Oct. 31. But the later start to this year's flu season is not significant, said health department spokesman John Hammond.

In Westminster, emergency room nurses have been working double shifts. In Hagerstown, the hospital has made up extra beds and canceled elective surgeries. In Randallstown, a Catholic school had to send so many children home that it closed for a day.Flu season is hitting Maryland later and harder than usual this year.Over the past three weeks, the flu has taxed nursing home services, emptied seats in classrooms and sent coughing and wheezing patients to hospitals across the state."We've been squeezing them in with shoehorns," said Dr. Michael Kerr, an emergency room physician at Carroll County General Hospital.

Though it will come as small comfort to anyone who is coughing, wheezing and sweating out a fever, health officials say the flu season of 1997-1998 is not shaping up to be a severe one.For those with ailing children parked in front of television sets, this winter may seem one of the worst in memory. But doctors and epidemiologists who track disease trends say the flu season has been about average and far less severe than last year's."It hasn't been terrible, not anything like last year, which hit early, hit real hard and then was gone," said Dale Rohn, chief of communicable disease surveillance for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

WASHINGTON -- Some serious summer flu outbreaks have infectious disease experts gearing up for what could be a ferocious -- and early -- flu season.Too few people are getting the flu shots that could save their lives in the yearly epidemics that sweep the nation, said experts who gathered here yesterday for an international conference on vaccines.Even fewer are getting a second shot, pneumococcal vaccine, which prevents the pneumonia, bronchitis, middle-ear infections and sinusitis that often follow flu. The vaccine, needed only once in a lifetime, has been available since 1977 and can be taken at the same time as the flu shot.

WASHINGTON -- It was the flu season to end all flu seasons.In the waning days of World War I, a new strain of influenza appeared. Normally a mortal threat only to infants and the aged, this microbe was 25 times deadlier. It was often a swift and ferocious killer of otherwise healthy adults.Between 20 million and 40 million died around the globe of the Spanish flu of 1918, probably the worst pandemic in human history. Almost a third of Americans were infected, and 675,000 died -- so many that, in a matter of months, U.S. life expectancy fell by 13 years.

Sniffle.Cough.Sneeze.Pass the tissues, please. The cold and flu season is upon us. And catching either illness is the last thing we need when there's so much to do. When we show up at work, everyone gives us the "you better-not-spread-whatever-you-have" look. When our kids show up sick at school or at the day-care center, they sometimes pass on their germs to others -- including their teachers.It's miserable.How can we avoid catching the cold or the flu? Dr. Gerald Wagner, a deputy health officer and medical director of an immunization program in California, offers information:What's the difference between a cold and a flu?

Childhood vaccination is one of America's genuine success stories -- only 200 to 300 American children now die every year from diseases that could have been prevented by vaccination. But the figures for adults tell a much sadder story.Every year, 50,000 to 70,000 adults die of influenza, pneumonia, hepatitis B and other diseases that could be prevented, says the National Coalition for Adult Immunization, a group of 85 health organizations.In fact, despite safe and effective vaccines, influenza (the "flu")

The county Department of Health has scheduled flu shot clinics this week and next for county residents.Pneumococcal vaccine also will be available at all clinic locations.Among those who should consider receiving influenza vaccine are people older than 65; with chronic heart and lung disease, including cystic fibrosis and asthma, kidney disease, diabetes, or hemoglobin disorders; and cancer or AIDS patients. If you are not sure if you should receive the influenza vaccine, contact your physician.

Lurking this flu season is a more dangerous strain of flu that could cause deadly complications, especially in the elderly.Now is the time to get a flu shot, says the Centers for Disease Control.Organized vaccination campaigns are conducted in October through mid-November.Of the three influenza virus strains expected to circulate, the Type A-Wuhan virus is the most dangerous.The others are Type A-Texas and Type B."The more viruses like Wuhan, the more people die," said Nancy Arden of the CDC.The current flu vaccine works against all three flu strains.

Nearly 5,500 calls came in to the Towson office of Dr. Sarah F. Whiteford in the month of October - more than twice the usual number. And even with extra staff manning the phones, about 1,000 patients grew tired of waiting and hung up. It's a flu season like the office has never experienced. And despite the nearly overwhelming volume, Whiteford and other primary doctors say the phone has become their most essential tool in not only managing the first pandemic in decades but tamping down the widespread anxiety about the swine flu virus that has killed 13 people in the state.

There is now little doubt the nation will experience a widespread -and perhaps severe - outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, traditionally the flu season in the Northern Hemisphere. Experts are still uncertain how virulent this particular flu strain, which has been circulating through the Southern Hemisphere in recent months, will be when it comes back our way, and they are monitoring it carefully for mutations that might render it more deadly. So far, there's no indication of that; according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although H1N1 does spread easily, it remains a relatively mild strain of influenza.

The number of swine flu cases in Mexico is stabilizing. In the U.S., though more people are being diagnosed with the virus, cases have been mostly mild, claiming two lives. And health officials have backed off on closing schools where students are sick. It may seem as though the threat of the virus known as H1N1 has lessened. But infectious disease experts and public health officials agree: The worst is likely still to come. In pandemics of the past, flu that arrived in the spring hit harder come fall, when influenza season returned.

On swine flu and falling pork prices Joyce W.: I think the Egyptians destroying all of the pigs in the country might have been a little, um, overkill. I'm continuing to buy and eat pork. The lower prices are very much appreciated, and if I had a chest freezer, it'd be filled with pork right now. I think the panic is somewhat reasonable owing to the amount of deaths from this illness, but it's been pointed out numerous times that eating pork has nothing to do with it. Dahlink: I agree with ... Joyce W., but it does gives me pause when I read that swine in Canada have been diagnosed with this flu. Robert of Cross Keys: The Egyptians are killing all the pigs?

The 2008-2009 influenza season is not quite over, but Maryland health officials say it appears to have peaked and the number of new cases is on the wane. "We expect lower levels of flu throughout the rest of the month of April, but it should finally be over by the beginning of May," said Rene Najera, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. This flu season has been milder than last year's, Najera said, and he credits the design of this year's vaccine. "The vaccine strains were a better match" for the viruses actually circulating for most of this season, he said.

You're all achy, coughing and feverish. Work is out of the question, but you're not sick enough to see a doctor. How nice it would be if someone checked in to ask how you're feeling. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene won't send over a pot of chicken soup. But state epidemiologists have a first-in-the-nation, Web-based project to ask thousands of residents whether they've been laid low by flu symptoms. The Maryland Resident Influenza Tracking Survey is designed to augment reports from the doctors, hospitals and medical laboratories traditionally used to gather data on the geography and intensity of the flu season.

Flu season, with its aches, fever and cough, is around the corner, says Dr. Timothy Doran, chairman of pediatrics at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. This year, for the first time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that all children 6 months to 18 years old receive flu vaccinations. Flu shots are available now and will be given until the flu season begins (which may be any time between December and March), Doran says. Why did the CDC recommend flu shots for children this year?

As Maryland wraps up its worst flu season in three years, a small army of researchers is working on a vexing problem: why flu shots so often don't help the elderly. No matter how many people are vaccinated and what recipe drug makers use to formulate the flu vaccine each year, it generally works in only 30 percent to 40 percent of those over 65 - compared with 80 percent to 90 percent of younger adults, experts say. Doctors gauge a vaccine's effectiveness by examining blood levels of the antibodies our bodies produce after receiving it. They say older bodies have more trouble producing the antibodies than younger ones, even with a push from flu vaccine, so they're working on a more potent version of today's shots for older patients.

When Gaithersburg-based MedImmune Inc. first introduced a needle-free flu vaccine five years ago, shareholders were as excited as the kids who needed it. So far, the product has fallen short of expectations. But that could change after a federal panel that advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended yesterday that all children, from six months of age to 18, be vaccinated for the flu. If adopted by the CDC, an additional 30 million children would need immunizations.

A typical day at Dr. Daniel Levy's pediatrics practice in Owings Mills provides a snapshot of the current flu epidemic, as five to 10 youngsters show up with the telltale fever, aches, cough and other miseries that mark the seasonal disease. "This year has been a bear," said Levy, who might see almost as many flu patients in a single day now as he saw during the entire 2006-2007 season. Across the country, doctors are reporting far heavier flu caseloads than they did in the previous two years, which saw a decline in the cyclical illness.