Many people have been taken by surprise as the flu season gets underway a lot earlier than had been expected in the U.S. The driver of this outbreak, especially on the West Coast, is a mutated flu version. Experts are calling for urgent vaccination drives to safeguard more people against this new threat.
Doctor Alex Greninger, The University of Washington’s Infectious Diseases Diagnostics chief, says flu outbreaks have been recorded on the West Coast before regions that usually experience flu season first. This is unusual, and has experts alarmed.
The season has started nearly three months earlier than is typically the case on the West Coast, and this phenomenon is being attributed to a new strain that has emerged after the virus mutated.
Typically, the flu starts in the Southern hemisphere and reaches the U.S. southern region before spreading northwards. Florida is normally the first to be hit at the start of the flu season. However, cities like Seattle, which are a lot further north, are recording flu cases at growing rates even before regions that first have the outbreak notice rising cases of the infection.
Under normal circumstances, Seattle starts seeing spikes in flu cases in December and January, so that October rise has taken health experts off-guard. Over the past two weeks, 10% of people tested for the virus have turned out positive, which is a pretty high rate.
Greninger says this rate of infection usually happens in January, but is now being seen in October. Sales of medications by major retailers like Walgreens attest to this early spike. Walgreens revealed that the volume of antiviral prescriptions that are being dispensed indicates that flu season has gotten underway about a month earlier than is the norm around the country.
A gene mutation in the H1N1 virus has been found to be responsible for this early surge in flu cases. Greninger’s lab is confirming this mutation in 98% of the samples sent over for testing. This particular mutation enables the virus to be better equipped at evading the immune system of the people infected.
Experts are concerned that this version of flu wasn’t predicted when flu shots were being selected to combat the expected strains this season. While the vaccines recommended target the H1N1 virus, the variant behind this mutated strain could still wreak havoc since available flu shots at medical facilities don’t specifically target this version.
All the same, experts are urging Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible because the flu season has come early and as many people as possible need to be protected.
As firms like Co-Diagnostics Inc. (NASDAQ: CODX) bring to market more decentralized testing tools that are affordable, it could get easier to catch infectious diseases early and implement needed interventions to protect communities.
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