It’s not flu season, but cases are rising in Fresno County. That’s got doctors worried
The same measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 over the past two years — masking, social distancing, and more — also appear to have reduced the incidence of seasonal flu in Fresno County.
But as recommendations and mandates are eased or eliminated for people to wear face coverings indoors and avoid large social gatherings, Fresno County is seeing a marked rise in influenza cases. That’s prompting local health officials to issue a health alert to doctors in the region.
March, April, and May are times of the year when flu cases are falling. But Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer with the Fresno County Department of Public Health, told The Fresno Bee in an interview Thursday that cases have been climbing in recent weeks.
Last week, for example, Vohra said that hospitals, emergency rooms, medical practices, and urgent-care clinics reported 1,366 visits from patients with influenza-like illness – a spectrum of ailments mostly from the flu virus but may also include COVID-19 or other upper-respiratory diseases.
That compares to first-week-of-May totals of 800 in 2020 and 900 in 2021.
“It’s atypical because we’re really out of the flu season” that generally runs from December through March, Vohra said. “Although the flu can circulate anytime, it’s the type of virus that survives better in wintertime conditions” to take advantage of families or groups gathering indoors where it can spread more readily.
The county health department issued the health alert Thursday afternoon, effectively asking doctors to be on the lookout for flu cases among their patients and reminding them of vaccines to prevent the flu and available treatments when cases are caught in the earliest stages.
Like COVID-19, influenza is a respiratory disease spread by a virus. Some of the same preventive measures can protect against both viruses – including vaccines that are available to boost a person’s resistance to them.
“We got lucky for the last couple of years. We were able to protect a lot of people from influenza because of all the layers of protection we had for COVID,” Vohra said. Precautions such as wearing face masks, practicing social distancing, and getting vaccinated “all combined to protect us from a wave of influenza, both last winter and the winter before.”
But now, as more residents, businesses, and government agencies put masking and distancing restrictions in the rear-view mirror, “the flu seems to be catching back up,” Vohra added.
Additionally, he said, many people who would otherwise have been exposed to influenza without those precautions over the last two winters avoided exposure and now may be more susceptible to flu viruses.
The flu can potentially be much more severe than a cold, particularly among people with other health conditions, including obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, immunodeficiency, and other ailments, because it tends to be more of a systemic infection that causes body aches, fatigue, and other symptoms beyond a cold. “People who get it don’t feel good, and you can’t just shake it off and go back to work or go to school,” Vohra said.
Because many people who have mild or moderate flu-like symptoms may choose to ride it out at home or simply call their doctor rather than visit an emergency room, the number of known flu cases is likely much larger than what’s being reported. “We’re assuming this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Vohra told The Bee. “This uptick in influenza is a reminder that masking can help us protect our vulnerable populations and decrease the spread of these illnesses.”
The ready availability of coronavirus home testing kits may also give people a false sense of security if the results are negative. But those tests don’t detect the flu. Vohra said that if people have a negative COVID test but still feel sick, not only should they stay home to avoid spreading whatever they have, but “they should go to their doctor or to an urgent care and get a flu test.”
Early detection of the flu is something Vohra said he’s trying to impress upon the local medical community as well as residents because there are oral medications that can be prescribed to head the virus off at the pass if taken within the first couple of days.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 8:30 AM.
