Beware, the flu is here!

This year’s flu season may be deadlier than usual, and this year’s flu vaccine is a relatively poor match to a new virus that is now circulating, federal health officials in the USA have warned.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has alerted doctors about the problem and has urged them to prescribe antiviral drugs like Tamiflu to vulnerable patients with flu symptoms without waiting for a
positive flu test.

The season has only just begun, but 91 percent of the approximately 1,200 samples tested thus far are of the H3N2 subtype of influenza A, said Dr Thomas R Frieden, director of the CDC. “Almost all the rest were influenza B. There were almost no samples of the H1 subtype, a descendant of the 2009 swine flu strain,” he added.

Moreover, about half of those H3 subtypes - or about 45 percent of all the samples tested so far - are of a new H3 subtype that this season’s flu
vaccine does not protect well against. Because it was not found in many
samples in the United States until

September, it is too late to change the vaccine, he added.
The CDC still recommends that all Americans get flu shots because they are protective against the older strains and may provide at least a weak
defence against the newer H3.

But because of the increased danger from the H3 strain, the CDC
recommends that patients with
asthma, diabetes or lung or heart problems see a doctor at the first sign of a possible flu.


NYTNS