Flu Season

Hospital emergency rooms, doctors' offices, and the nation's sinuses have been less congested this winter, thanks to the mildest flu season in at least six years. The 2000-01 flu season, which began in October with vaccine shortages, has turned out to be one of the lightest in recent memory for deaths, contagion, and other effects on health, said Keiji Fukuda, chief of influenza epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "We were incredibly lucky," said Janet Englund, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago.

As families scramble to get ready for the first day of school, they may not be thinking about the coming flu season, but after last year's H1N1 outbreak, city officials have one message for Philadelphia parents: Keep your sick kids at home! "If a parent sees the symptoms . . . please keep your child home until such time as these symptoms go away," Tom?s Hanna, the chief of school operations, said during a media briefing yesterday with city Public Health Department officials. On Tuesday, letters will be sent to parents explaining H1N1 prevention techniques and why it is important that children with flu symptoms don't go to school.

The flu season is off to a sluggish start, but public health experts say that does not necessarily mean it will be a mild year. The viral illness typically doesn't peak until late January or early February - and doctors say it still makes sense to get a flu shot. "This year it's been pretty slow," said Andre Weltman, public health physician for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, "but unfortunately that doesn't tell us how bad it's going to be. " New Jersey and federal health officials offer similar assessments.

Claude Lewis is a veteran Philadelphia journalist Lots of people are unhappy at the end of summer because it spells the end of carefree travel, lengthy vacations and play on the beach. I hate summer's end for one main reason - it usually ushers in the beginning of flu season. Some of us think of the flu as just a cold, but those who think that way usually have not experienced how devastating the flu can be. Because it can be devastating, I'm writing to persuade folks to get themselves immunized.

Don't stick around in crowded places. And wash your hands often. That's the advice state health officials have for you lucky folks out there who haven't gotten the flu . . . yet. Tests have now confirmed that this year's flu has arrived in Philadelphia, right on schedule for its annual late January appearance. It swept in from central Pennsylvania, where state health department officials say it hit about 2,000 students at Penn State University in State College over a period of a week and a half.

As the latest flu season trails off, area hospitals can once again handle daily emergency-room crowds, which were overflowing just one month ago. "I think the flu epidemic has subsided. The flu had our census much higher a month ago," said Scott Lux, public relations director at Phoenixville Hospital. Heavy flu seasons strike every few years. Flu and its complications can kill 50,000 Americans during such seasons. The flu was not the only reason for record-high patient populations in January.

As states in the West grapple with an unusually early and nasty flu season, public health officials here urge residents to get flu shots before the full force of the virus hits. Cases of the flu already have been reported throughout Pennsylvania, and labs in Philadelphia reported a big increase in confirmed cases last week, representatives of the state and city Health Departments said. There have been only three confirmed cases so far in New Jersey. Nationally, the flu seasons of the last three years were relatively mild.

WITH THE FIRST day of school just five days away, school-district and city health officials face the challenge of fighting two strains of viruses during this fall's flu season. Next week, the city Health Department and the Philadelphia School District will send letters home to give parents instructions on dealing with swine flu, district spokesman Fernando Gallard said. Training for school nurses regarding the virus was to begin today at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School, 22nd Street and Lehigh Avenue, North Philadelphia.

The flu is here and gathering strength, but, so far, the flu season in Pennsylvania and New Jersey has been relatively mild, health officials said. Only 17 cases of the viral disease have been reported in Pennsylvania, but doctors are not required to report or test every suspected flu case. Rather, the state keeps track of cases to see how widespread the flu is and whether the strains in circulation are susceptible to this year's vaccine. The good news, for those of you who got the shot, is that it should be effective against the flu germs in this region.

DEAR ABBY: Now is the time of year your readers should get vaccinated against influenza to protect themselves and their loved ones throughout the 2010-11 flu season. This year, our nation has a new and very simple recommendation to keep our population safe: Everyone 6 months of age and older should get vaccinated! Doing it now will protect you throughout the entire flu season, which can run into the spring months. The influenza vaccine is safe - you cannot get influenza from it. In addition to getting vaccinations in doctors' offices, people can receive them in pharmacies, supermarkets, senior centers and schools.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed what you already guessed: This has been a remarkably mild flu season. The influenza virus likes cold weather, so infections normally occur from October through March. But technically, the flu season doesn't start until labs that test respiratory swabs from sick people find the virus in more than 10 percent of the samples. This season, that threshold wasn't reached until the week ended Feb. 11, making this the kindest flu spell in 29 years.

Do you have a cold or the flu? Flu season is upon us in full force and, unfortunately, your chances of being exposed to the miseries are greater than you think. Three of four (75 percent) of the 1,044 Americans polled by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases said they would still go to at least one social situation even if they had flu symptoms. And what are those symptoms? Susan Rehm, medical director of the foundation, says there's a big difference between cold and flu symptoms and they're spelled FACTS: F - The flu commonly results in fever.

Now, all you have to do is roll up your sleeve. Flu immunization vaccinations are being offered free at many locations across South Jersey, including health clinics, schools and community centers, officials said this week. In Gloucester County, the Board of Freeholders extended its program of shots for county residents at clinics through March. "It is not too late to get a flu shot," said Freeholder Director Robert Damminger in announcing the extended clinics. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that every person over the age of 6 months receive a flu shot as the first and best way to protect against influenza.

This season's flu has hit the Philadelphia region, killing two adults and a child in Montgomery County, officials reported Tuesday. A 32-year-old Upper Merion woman died on Christmas, a 24-year-old Norristown man died Jan. 3, and a 2-year-old Lower Merion child died Dec. 21, said Harriet Morton, spokeswoman for the county Health Department. She said that because of the fatalities, the department was advising all members of the public older than 6 months to go for a flu shot. "If you have not gotten the flu vaccine, it is important, and this is why," Morton said.

Nearly two years after pandemic flu terrified, however briefly, a lot of Americans, and nearly one year after all flu virtually disappeared, public-health officials said Friday that the early signs were pointing toward the return of a normal flu season. This does not mean much, since everything about the flu - where, when, how widespread, how severe - varies from year to year. But an average season sees one or two key influenza type "A" strains and one influenza type "B" strain appear around the country in late fall or early winter, get an infectious boost at holiday gatherings, and then make a lot of people sick between January and March.

DEAR ABBY: Now is the time of year your readers should get vaccinated against influenza to protect themselves and their loved ones throughout the 2010-11 flu season. This year, our nation has a new and very simple recommendation to keep our population safe: Everyone 6 months of age and older should get vaccinated! Doing it now will protect you throughout the entire flu season, which can run into the spring months. The influenza vaccine is safe - you cannot get influenza from it. In addition to getting vaccinations in doctors' offices, people can receive them in pharmacies, supermarkets, senior centers and schools.

Remember the seasonal flu? The last typical season was the winter of 2008-09. The pattern was upended by an out-of-season pandemic flu the following spring and fall, and hardly any flu at all last winter. Now the best educated guess by public-health experts is that influenza will next appear in a more-or-less normal season that contains several strains, including the so-called swine flu. And vaccine is starting to arrive. Several retail drugstore chains are already offering vaccine or plan to start soon.

With the flu season approaching, three drugmakers have been given the clearance to begin shipping vaccines. Novartis Vaccines, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur were each given the greenlight by the Food and Drug Administration to distribute this season's vaccine. Novartis plans to release about 40 million doses of Fluvirin; GSK plans on supplying 30 million combined doses of its FluLaval and Fluarix; and Sanofi Pasteur is set to begin releasing 70 million doses of Fluzone. Glaxo has operations in the Philadelphia region; Sanofi-Aventis' Sanofi Pasteur division is the world's biggest vaccines manufacturer and has operations in Swiftwater, Monroe County.

Howie Mandel is a major germaphobe. The folks at America's Got Talent - where he's the newest judge - had to know this. The title of Mandel's autobiography is Don't Touch Me . As a child, he wouldn't fix undone shoelaces because they'd touched the floor. How long have you been a germaphobe, he was once asked. "You're asking my age?" he replied. And yet, somebody at the NBC summer hit apparently thought it would be funny to test the bald big mouth's microbe-phobia.

"The whole aim of practical politics," wrote H.L. Mencken, "is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. " Last year's hobgoblin was swine flu. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology warned of as many as 90,000 excess flu deaths, and the federal government declared two national emergencies. Yet, with the U.S. flu season ending, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate we've had perhaps a third the usual number of flu deaths.