Seasonal Influenza Unprecedented

14 Mars 2025 – CAPE COD, MA – This year is seeing higher than normal activity of the seasonal influenza. Several hundreds of people have died in Massachusetts, including children. LCTV spoke with the Cape and Islands’ epidemiologist about the situation.

What Is The Seasonal Influenza?

There has been a lot of attention on the avian flu this winter, but at the same time – perhaps somewhat under the media radar – this season is seeing higher than normal activity of the regular influenza. Several hundreds of people have died, including children.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has "observed a possible increase in the number of cases of children with influenza with neurologic complications compared to prior seasons." Since July 2024 ten children have died from complications. State epidemiologists and health authorities are in the midst of analyzing why this year’s influenza activity has been exceptionally severe with an unusually high number of hospitalizations and deaths.

“We certainly have seen a pretty high burden of folks sick going to emergency departments and in hospitalizations on the Cape, and it's still ongoing,” says Lea Hamner, Contract Epidemiologist for the Barnstable Department of Public Health. “We sometimes do see more severe illnesses for infectious diseases because we have more medically fragile people. But that also is our kind of underlying population as we have an older population here on Cape Cod."

How Many Have The Flu?

The first week of February, at its peak, over 11,000 people had positive lab tests for the seasonal influenza in Massachusetts. That number does not represent the number of people who are not tested or whose tests are not submitted to the state laboratory, nor all the people with influenza-like illness but who do not see their health care provider for their symptoms.

“We're not ever gonna be able to capture all the flu burden in our community. But instead we look at the data sources that we have for trends over time. And so the data sources look at emergency department visits, hospitalizations, also outpatient visits from a random sample of provider sites to see kind of how many people are presenting with influenza-like illness,
which is fever and sore throat, or fever and cough,” says Hamner.

How Many Have Died?

The latest data, updated by the MDPH every Thursday, shows a decrease of infections in Massachusetts, however on Cape Cod the assessment of the activity is still very high. A total of 352 people have died from complications, ten of the deaths were children under 18 years of age.

“We generally see that kids aren't our most severe manifestations of influenza. Usually it's our older population, and so certainly it's alarming to see children hospitalized with seasonal flu, and the manifestations that have been reported by providers include encephalitis in these really severe situations nationwide,” says Hamner.

Why Do Children Die From Influenza?

According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every season up to 13% of the pediatric flu deaths have had neurological complications. This season is on the higher end of that spectrum. Neurological symptoms in children with the flu may be seizures causing inflammation of brain tissue. Symptoms can also be meningitis and inflammation of the spinal cord. Massachusetts department of public health refers to studies suggesting that pre-existing neurological conditions make children more vulnerable to these complications, as are children who are unvaccinated against the flu.

“There's a lot to tease through in these cases. And epidemiologists do that very systematically, going through the records, going through the risk factors, capturing that information, and then applying statistics to see is this actually indicative of this being the reason or is it a multitude of reasons or can we not figure it out right now and we need more information,” says Hamner.

What About Flu Vaccination?

The MDPH states that this season the vaccine rates are lower than usual for people under 65, which they believe contribute to the high number of infections. The first week of February, 10 percent of hospitalizations and almost 12% of health care provider visits were related to the flu, compared with a baseline of only 2 percent.

“The most important things I want the public to know is that respiratory disease is preventable and we can take precautions to prevent ourselves from getting sick, our family members from getting sick, our loved ones from getting sick,” says Hamner.

She adds that vaccination is important as well as staying home when sick and masking when going out with symptoms.

“Good hand washing is as important as it always has been, we definitely have a lot of cooties that are going around this time of year that handwashing goes a long way," Hamner says. "Soap is king. Soap is the sngle greatest human invention to save lives in human history. And so if we can wash our hands more often, it does make a difference.”