The flu hospitalizes hundreds every year, CDC research finds

1 Nov

The flu hospitalizes hundreds every year, CDC research finds


Seasonal flu might not simply peak with fever, cough and a sore throat. Many individuals, particularly seniors and youthful youngsters, land within the hospital with extreme sickness, based on a brand new research.

Greater than 100,000 persons are hospitalized and 4,900 folks die from flu issues yearly within the U.S. Vaccines, which goal final 12 months’s dominant flu strains, may help you avert severe sickness or dying.

The research printed Tuesday within the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report confirmed the dangers seasonal flu nonetheless poses, particularly to individuals who have not been vaccinated.

“At all ages, there are individuals who haven’t any underlying medical situations which can be nonetheless liable to hospitalization,” Dr. William Schaffner, a research co-author and professor of infectious ailments at Vanderbilt College Medical Heart, informed USA TODAY. “The influenza virus, in all of its guises, is a formidable virus that may take a wholesome individual and put them within the hospital inside 48 hours.”

A doctor administering a flu vaccine to an elderly patient.

Knowledge collected by the CDC’s flu surveillance community from 2010 to 2023 discovered folks 65 and older had the very best hospitalization charge, adopted by youngsters 4 and youthful. Total, these teams are typically at larger danger from infectious ailments.

The research – completed by researchers from the CDC and greater than a dozen different institutes, well being departments and universities – was primarily based on a overview of hospitalization data taken from a number of U.S. areas. The findings do not mirror the entire nation.