Reported by Dr. Lauren Browne:
Flu season arrived early this year. And according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s shaping up to be a bad one.
CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden announced today that Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas have reported enough seasonal flu cases to officially mark the beginning of the flu season.
“We’re seeing the beginning of the uptick start at least a month before we’d generally see it,” Frieden said, explaining that flu rates typically start to rise in early January.
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Missouri and Georgia are also well on their way to meeting the critical threshold number of cases. And as the season progresses, the infection is expected to spread across the nation.
“It looks like it’s shaping up to be a bad flu season,” Frieden said, explaining that the predominant flu subtype being passed around — H3N2 — is known to cause more severe il..
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/12/03/flu-season-arrives-early-and-could-be-bad/
