Recurrent H1N1 Flu Hits Adults 18-64 Hard
By Michael Smith
MedPageToday.com
By Michael Smith
The flu this season — mostly the pandemic pH1N1 strain — has been hard on young and middle-age adults, the CDC is reporting.
People 18 through 64 account for 61% of all hospital admissions for laboratory-confirmed influenza, the agency reported in the Feb. 21 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
The pattern appears to be similar for deaths in which influenza was a contributing factor, the CDC said, with an estimate of 62% occurring among people 25 through 64.
Some 97% of tested flu specimens have been influenza A, and of those 96% were pH1N1 — the first time the strain has predominated since the 2009-2010 pandemic, the agency said.
“Influenza can make anyone very sick, very fast, and it can kill,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD, told reporters in a telephone briefing Thursday.
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