New York, February 11: The past 10 days have witnessed a significant rise in flu cases throughout New York, as per state health officials.
Meanwhile, their federal counterparts are struggling with the resistance of a major influenza strain to the principal antiviral drug. State officials told that the number of people suffering from flu has gone up drastically in recent days in contrast to the previous weeks during this season.
Director of the virology laboratory at Nassau University Medical Center, Dr. Gary Leonardi, remarked, “Over the last two weeks we’ve gone to widespread flu activity.”
It is worth mentioning here that Leonardi’s lab is one of the 13 main sentinel sites in the state that examine flu samples from all hospitals in Long Island and the city besides those from his own medical center.
Afterwards, samples that test positive are forwarded to the New York State Health Department Lab, which then sends flu statistics to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC then makes use of this data to decide which viruses are to be targeted for the next year’s vaccine.
Leonardi was quoted as saying, “This is the peak in the season, but we are actually seeing the peak a little later this time around, so there is a shift this year.”
The fact that many people self-treat flu at home makes it difficult for disease detectives to arrive at an exact number of patients suffering from it, said the state health department spokeswoman, Claire Pospisil.
Suffolk County Health Commissioner Dr. Humayun Chaudhary said, “Last year there were 2,500 deaths attributed to influenza in New York, so it’s something that impacts morbidity and mortality in the state.” Around 36,000 people across America died of flu in 2008.
This flu season, the problem has been aggravated because of increasing drug resistance shown by one of the main ‘A’ strains of flu, and a vaccine that is not effective against a particular strain of B influenza. Viruses are exhibiting resistance to a flu medication called oseltamivir which is sold as Tamiflu.
According to CDC medical epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fiore, the resistance was first observed in Norway where Tamiflu is normally not prescribed. He said, “We don’t know why the resistance has occurred. It’s probably not driven by overuse of drug.”
The disparity between the B strain vaccine and the one that is currently in circulation, will be deliberated upon at a meeting in Washington next week, said Dr. Fiore.
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