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Washington: The United
States is in the grip of a flu epidemic.
Over 100 deaths have been attributed to the disease with 24 states
and New York City reporting high levels of flu activity, according
to CDC's flu advisory report for Dec 30 through Jan 5. That's down
from 29 states the previous week, Thomas Frieden, director of the
CDC was cited as saying by CNN.
"... We are into what would classically be described as a flu
epidemic," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of
Health, told CNN. "It's still on the uptick," he said.
"The only area of the country that's still relatively unaffected
... is the far West Coast," although plenty of cases have been
reported there, Dr. Joseph Bresee, chief of the Epidemiology and
Prevention Branch of the CDC's Influenza Division, said Friday.
However, its spread across the country appears to have slowed in
some areas, according to the Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC).
According to the latest CDC activity map, flu levels dropped in
several states, particularly in the Southeast, including Georgia,
Florida, South Carolina, Arkansas and Kentucky. In the Northeast,
levels in some states have also improved, such as New York, but
New York City remains among the areas of high activity.
The number of states reporting widespread activity, however,
increased to 47 from 41, according to the CDC's flu advisory
report. The only states without widespread activity are
California, Hawaii and Mississippi.
Massachusetts is one state that the CDC had identified as having
high activity of influenza-like illness based on the week ending
Dec 29, but downgraded it to "moderate" activity in Friday's
update.
There have been over 100 flu-related deaths this season. These
include 18 in Massachusetts, 8 in Oklahoma, 22 in Pennsylvania, 13
in Indiana, seven in Arkansas, 22 in South Carolina, six in
Illinois and four in Michigan.
(Arun Kumar can
be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
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