Lebanon
As the number of cases peak, public health officials are urging those who have not yet gotten a flu shot to get one and benefit from whatever protection it might afford, despite the fact that this year’s vaccine isn’t a great match for the most common flu strain.
This season appears to be worse than others in recent years, said Dr. Michael Calderwood, the regional hospital epidemiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.
“We have been seeing a significant spike in flu cases this year,” Calderwood said.
At DHMC, a little more than 4 percent of patients seeking care in an outpatient setting are coming in with influenza-like symptoms, which is higher than the peak of the flu season in the previous two years, but lower than what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting nationally, he said. Nationally, nearly 6 percent of patients are coming in with flu-like symptoms, according to the CDC.
The flu, also known as influenza, usually comes on suddenly and may include symptoms such as sore throat, nasal congestion, body aches, fever, headache, fatigue and a dry cough.
Flu was widespread in 49 states, including New Hampshire and Vermont, as of the first week of this month, according to the CDC, the Vermont Department of Health and the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. Widespread illness is defined as an increase in influenza-like illness or influenza outbreaks in at least half of a state, and recent laboratory-confirmed influenza in each state.
In his 42 years at Gifford Medical Center, Dr. Lou DiNicola has seen flu seasons “much worse” than this one.
But this year, the peak of the season seems to have arrived early and the illness appears to be migrating across the country rapidly, said DiNicola, a pediatrician and the medical director for the Randolph-based federally qualified health center.
“Within a one-week time period, it seems to (have gone from being) in a few states to being endemic to every state but one,” DiNicola said. “That’s unusual.”
Gifford’s emergency department has been busy with patients seeking relief and has admitted several patients due to severe cases of the flu, DiNicola said.
The positive side of having an earlier peak of illness than in previous years is that the season may be over more quickly, he said.
Calderwood said the number of DHMC patients newly diagnosed with the flu in an inpatient setting doubled in the first week of the year to nine, but that number has since dropped down to one.
Still, Calderwood warned against saying that the peak has passed.
“We will see,” he said.
This year’s flu vaccine is not very effective against the predominant flu strain — H3N2 — in circulation, so public health officials are urging people to be prepared.
“This version of the flu can result in more severe illness, with more severe consequences for some people, though even regular flu can be pretty unpleasant,” Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said in a news release on Wednesday.
Though the vaccine isn’t a great match, officials are still urging those who haven’t yet gotten the vaccine to do so.
“Some protection is better than zero protection,” Levine said in the release.
Like Levine, DiNicola still recommends that people get the flu shot. While most flu clinics were held in the fall, patients seeking flu shots can usually get in for a shot the same day they call, he said.
“Unless we’re out of (the vaccine), we say come on in,” he said.
Getting the flu vaccine can help reduce the severity of the disease and reduce the likelihood of a hospital admission or death, DiNicola said. For example, an immunized patient suffering from the flu might expect symptoms to last from seven to 10 days, but a patient who has had the vaccine might reduce the length of illness by more than half, he said.
Such was the case recently with a pediatric patient of DiNicola’s whose acute illness lasted just a few days. The patient, who had gotten the vaccine, missed just one day of school, DiNicola said.
Neither Vermont nor New Hampshire has traced any pediatric deaths to the flu season thus far. Nationwide, the CDC reports 20 pediatric deaths have been linked to the flu.
There have so far been 10 influenza-related deaths of adult New Hampshire residents, who resided outside of the Upper Valley, according to DHHS. The number of adult Vermonters who have died of influenza-related causes was not immediately available on Wednesday.
“There are such deaths each flu season,” said Ben Truman, a spokesman for the Vermont Department of Health. “This is why we are so strongly encouraging people at risk of complication to contact their doctor at the first sign of illness.”
New Hampshire officials also are closely monitoring the flu season this year because previous seasons in which H3N2 has been the most predominant flu strain have demonstrated “the potential for a higher rate of hospitalizations and number of deaths,” DHHS spokesman Jake Leon said in an email.
In addition to getting the flu vaccine, Leon urged people to take other preventative measures such as “frequent hand-washing, staying home and limiting contact with others when you are sick, and covering your mouth and nose when you sneeze or cough.”
Once people develop the flu, Leon said, they should contact their health care providers and ask about antiviral medications.
Like DHMC and Gifford, most Upper Valley health care providers are seeing their share of patients with flu and flu-like symptoms.
Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon also has seen an uptick in the number of patients coming in for the flu, said Dr. Brian Lombardo, APD’s medical director of primary care.
“This is consistent with what is being seen nationally — that we are still very much in the midst of flu season,” Lombardo said in an email on Wednesday. “The best protection is still to wash your hands and avoid exposure to people with flu-like symptoms.”
The Lake Sunapee Region Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice is so far seeing a “pretty average” flu season in home care and hospice patients, said April Bartley, the New London-based organization’s director of hospice and palliative care.
In an email, she said she recommends the vaccine for prevention, and that those who are sick wash their hands frequently and stay home.
Prevention efforts appear to be working for Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire, which has “not seen the flu affecting our patients this year,” according to Sheila Aubin, the organization’s director of community programs.
“Our staff have mandatory yearly flu immunizations and practice good hand hygiene, so that certainly helps along with the fact that many of our patients are homebound and not being exposed to the virus,” she said in an email.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
