Decorate the halls with masks and sanitizer: New York’s flu outbreak could hamper vacation plans
The holiday season: a time for family, feasting and endemic strains of the flu virus infecting you and your loved ones.
Flu cases in New York began increasing earlier than usual this year. As New Yorkers travel to and from the city, attend parties and visit family and friends, health officials are urging people to take precautions against a strain that appears to be ravaging the region.
Here’s what you need to know about the virus, vaccination rates and how to stay healthy this holiday season.
What’s new about this year’s flu?
The dominant flu virus currently infecting people across the country is a relative of the common H3N2 strain. But experts say this variant, called subclade K, has a number of mutations that don’t respond as well to vaccines.
“In terms of symptoms, [there’s] nothing we know is different about this virus other than it’s just going to be able to infect more people and therefore we’ll see more cases,” said Andy Pekosz, a virologist and professor of microbiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.
Pekosz nonetheless encouraged people to get vaccinated to prevent the most serious symptoms of the disease and guard against some of the other strains circulating.
As of mid-November, 3.4 million New Yorkers statewide had received their flu vaccine, about 5% fewer than those who were vaccinated at the same time last year, according to the state Department of Health.
Schools, children on the front line
The virus is also spreading in municipal schools.
In New York, nearly 500,000 children have been vaccinated against the flu so far this season, representing a 6.5% drop from the same period last year, according to the city health department.
Parents anecdotally told Gothamist that classrooms were half-empty this week, but the city Department of Education could not immediately say whether there had been a significant drop in attendance systemwide. Attendance at New York City schools was 85% Thursday.
Poly Prep Country Day School closed its Dyker Heights campus Dec. 10 and 11 out of “an abundance of caution” after about a third of students were absent or sent home with flu-like symptoms, according to Jennifer Slomack, the school’s senior director of engagement and communications.
“The two-day closure allowed students to rest and recuperate while we simultaneously conducted intensive hard surface disinfection and UV disinfection through our forced air HVAC systems,” she said. Attendance rebounded after the school reopened on December 12.
Leslie Pennypacker, executive director of Tribeca Pediatrics, said her staff has reported more than 2,000 positive flu cases — a “significant” increase — over the past two weeks among children entering their 50 offices in the New York metropolitan area.
