NEW YORK — Flu season in the US appears to be over. It was long, but not unusually severe.
Last week, for the third week in a row, doctor visits for flu-like illnesses fell below the threshold for what is considered an active flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
Other indicators, such as hospitalizations and patient testing, also show low and declining activity. No states are reporting high flu activity. Only New England is seeing the kind of patient traffic associated with an active flu season right now, but even there the flu’s impact is considered modest.
Since the beginning of October, there have been at least 34 million illnesses, 380,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths from the flu, according to CDC estimates. The agency said 148 children died from the flu.
CDC officials considered this a “moderate” flu season, an assessment shared by other doctors.
Even at the peak, “we felt tense, but never overpowered,” said Dr. Jay Varkey, an infectious disease physician at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital.
“It felt more like a traditional respiratory virus season than when we had large COVID surges confusing it,” he added.
For much of the season, most illnesses were attributed to a milder strain of flu, which officials said corresponded well with seasonal flu vaccines. Preliminary data presented in February suggested the vaccines were about 40% effective in preventing adults from getting sick enough with the flu to have to go to a doctor’s office, clinic or hospital.
COVID-19 illnesses appear to have peaked around the same time as the flu. The same happened with diseases caused by another respiratory virus, RSV.
CDC data indicates that coronavirus hospitalizations have not reached the same levels they did at the same point during the past three winters. Earlier this year, COVID-19 was putting more people in the hospital than the flu. But right now hospitalization rates are about the same, CDC data shows.
While the season wasn’t particularly bad, it was long — and spring flu surges are always possible.
COVID-19 has changed the way health authorities track respiratory viruses.
The agency used to count the number of weeks of elevated visits to the doctor’s office for flu-like symptoms, but the flu-like symptoms of COVID-19 confounded that. Now the agency is focusing on the number of weeks in which a high percentage of samples tested positive for flu.
Under the new measure, the 2023-24 flu season lasted 21 weeks. Under the previous measure, flu seasons before the COVID-19 pandemic tended to last between 11 and 21 weeks.
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