Flu season rough on practitioners

For family physicians in the region, this year’s flu season has been brutal.

“We’re just trying to hang on,” said Chattanooga pediatrician Dr. Marcie Burton, who said she has faced a steady stream of flu patients for weeks.

The season is in full swing in North Georgia, too, and doctors say it does not seem to be relenting.

“It’s just been running rampant,” said Dr. Chip Harris, who practices with Erlanger South Family Medicine. This year “it seems to me that the duration of the intense flu season seems longer.”

This year’s flu season, which worsened in February, began later than last year’s season and seems to be hitting with greater ferocity, local health officials said.

Reported cases of influenza-like illness in Hamilton County reached 839 in the week ended Feb. 23, compared to 530 cases in the week ended Feb. 16.

“We’re seeing that trend nationally,” said Margaret Zylstra, epidemiology manager with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department. “The (national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) data is certainly showing we’re in a more intense flu season than the last two years.”

This year’s flu vaccine turned out to be ineffective against most strains of the flu, federal health officials have said. They said the vaccine, developed months in advance of the flu season, was a “poor match” for the flu strains that ended up hitting this year, and doctors here are seeing many vaccinated patients with the flu.

Even so, the vaccine has helped lessen the severity of the flu even if one gets it, local doctors said.

“We haven’t seen the major complications with it that we have seen before,” Dr. Burton said. “There’s not a lot of pneumonia right now secondary to the flu.”

Last week the national Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices announced new recommendations that expand the age range of those who should be vaccinated annually to include all those between 6 months and 18 years old. The change adds about 30 million more children that CDC officials say should get flu vaccinations.

Previously the committee, which advises the CDC on vaccines, had recommended shots for children ages 6 months to 59 months and children with chronic medical conditions.

Data have shown that immunizing all children may decrease the spread of disease in a community, Ms. Zylstra said.

“Children are very good flu spreaders,” she said. “They tend to get it more easily because of their less-developed immune system. They tend to carry higher concentration of the virus in their bodies, and they’re in settings where they can easily spread it.”

Dr. Burton said she has been prescribing Tamiflu to ward off the virus for patients who have not had it this season and to treat the flu for patients in the first 48 hours of the onset of sickness.

But doctors here reminded patients that antibiotics such as penicillin do not help treat the flu.

“We struggle with this all the time,” said Dr. Allen Sherwood of Erlanger East Family Medicine. “Influenza is a virus. Antibiotics are not going to help.”

Washing hands still is the No. 1 way to prevent the spread of flu, Dr. Harris said.

Ms. Zylstra said it is not too late for a flu vaccination, and they are available at the local health department through March.

Dr. Burton said she has seen patients come down with two different strains of the flu this season.

“Just because you had flu A doesn’t mean you’re not going to get flu B, so keep washing your hands,” she said.