Thread by @HelenBranswell

1. A #flu 🧵
@CDCgov has published flu data for the week ending Feb. 12. What is being seen nationally continues a trend that has been evident for several weeks — flu season peaked over the holidays & has been declining ever since. Red arrow points to this year.

2. #Flu is notoriously hard to predict; there could be late season activity yet to come. And @CDCgov says there are parts of the country where activity picked up a bit in the week ending Feb. 12. Not enough to make parts of this map turn red, though.

3. @CDCgov estimates 1,300 people have died from #flu this year in the US. That's very low. Most flu seasons kill between 12,000 & 52,000 people in this country.
One of the key reasons for this year's low death toll is the low rate of outbreaks in care facilities.

4. The rate of hospitalizations for #flu this winter is also low. Earlier this season it looked like 2021-22 was going to see a higher hospitalization rate than 2015-16, a historically mild season. But it looks like this year's rate is now below 2015-16.

5. @CDCgov reported a case of a person infected with a swine #flu virus. Occurred in California; the person, an adult, had contact with pigs. Some contacts of the individual had respiratory symptoms, but there were other respiratory viruses circulating & no testing was done

6. That swine #flu case is the third zoonotic flu infection seen in the US this flu season. The other 2 were in Ohio and Oklahoma
@CDCgov's Fluview is here: cdc.gov/flu/weekly/