Washington hospitals and health care facilities are seeing more people come in with flu symptoms.
“Flu activity is really up,” said Snohomish County Health Officer Dr. James Lewis. “We will expect those numbers to really jump up here in the next couple weeks as we probably hit a peak. But flu can be unpredictable, so we could see another drop, then another peak – have to wait and see how it goes.”
So far this flu season in Snohomish County, there have been nearly 300 flu-related hospitalizations and 12 flu-related deaths, including a teenager.
While there’s no way to tell how bad this flu season will get, always look out for the signs.
“Feeling more tired than usual, cough, runny nose, body aches, fever – those are kind of the big symptoms for the flu,” said Lewis.
Health officials say, if you haven’t already, consider getting a flu shot.
Lewis says those 65 and older are more likely to get vaccinated.
“Around 50-60 percent of those folks are getting vaccinated, and that hasn’t really changed, but where we see the decline is everybody younger than that, particularly the really young kids,” said Lewis.
As flu numbers are expected to climb, Lewis says there’s a positive trend when it comes to respiratory infections.
“It kinda has been doing the same thing as COVID, at a high level and last week was one of the downs, so I’m hoping that down trend will continue, but overall we had less RSV cases this year than we had before,” said Lewis.
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