Flu, Flu Season | featured news

Pregnant women should get flu shots, health experts say, but they've got to be more careful than others about over-the-counter medications for relief.

Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

Amid the most severe influenza season in more than a decade, federal health officials on Wednesday approved a next-generation, insect-based flu vaccine that sidesteps the thorniest parts of production -- and will be used immediately in people willing to test it.

With the nation in the grip of a severe influenza outbreak that has seen deaths reach epidemic levels, New York State declared a public health emergency on Saturday, making access to vaccines more easily available.

Patients can refuse a flu shot. Should doctors and nurses have that right, too? That is the thorny question surfacing as U.S. hospitals increasingly crack down on employees who won't get flu shots, with some workers losing their jobs over their refusal....

As the country's flu outbreak becomes an epidemic, odds are that you've had a few sheepish feelings about not doing something you probably should have: Gotten a flu shot. As of this November, the majority of American adults 64.8 percent, to be exact had not received a flu immunization. This wasn't a surprise to researchers: Flu is a disease with one of the lowest vaccination rates.

Influenza has officially reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with 7.3 percent of deaths last week caused by pneumonia and the flu, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. That is just above the epidemic threshold of 7.2 percent. Nine of the 10 U.S. regions had "elevated" flu activity, confirming that seasonal flu has spread across the country and reached high levels several weeks before the usual time of late January or February. The other region, the Southwest and California, had "normal" flu activity last week.

Flu activity remains high across the United States, but there are signs this year's bad season may be waning in some areas, government health officials said Friday.

Flu season in the United States is having its earliest start in nearly a decade and health officials say this season could be a bad one. Although flu is always unpredictable, the early nature of the cases and the predominant type circulating this year could make this a severe flu season, said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This year’s flu season has kicked in early this year, with activity up significantly across the nation, particularly in the south and southeast, federal health officials say. The U.S. has logged baseline levels of flu, the earliest that has happened in nearly a decade.