The U.S. flu season is off to the earliest start in a decade, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With higher-than-normal reports of flu coming in from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas, this flu season could be a bad one.
This is at least a month earlier than we would generally see the beginning of the uptick in cases," said CDC director Thomas Frieden. And Americans seem to be taking note. So far approximately 112 million Americans have been vaccinated, and it's expected that 135 million doses of vaccine will be produced total this year, so there shouldn't be any vaccine shortages, said Frieden.
While the flu season could be a tough one, the good news is that the currently-approved vaccine has demonstrated excellent efficacy against the flu strains now circulating. ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom adds that the average flu vaccine match varies from year to year and is typically about 75 percent, but this one is 90 percent.
