CHICAGO (WLS) -- It's been an especially tough cold and flu season, but could the worst be over? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the number of people being hospitalized for the flu is up, but is no longer at an epidemic level overall.
Doctors said that locally, the number of cases they are treating is also going down, though they are not sure that's because we've officially peaked, or simply because people have been out of school and work for the holidays.
One of the busiest ER's in the city, Cook County's Stroger Hospital has seen a steady influx of patients coming in showing flu-like symptoms. Twenty-nine states are now reporting high levels of influenza nationwide, up from 22 a week ago. And yet, the CDC said Monday we're now technically just below the flu epidemic threshold.
"Our peak was about mid-December and has fallen very substantially since then," said Dr. David Schwarz, Cook County Hospital.
With so many people sick, a consequence of flu season is an increased loss in productivity.
"It's estimated that it costs 111 million lost days to sickness every year. That's over $7 billion dollars," said John Challenger, of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
And while most people know they should not go to work while sick, some say employers need to do more to encourage their personnel to stay home when they have the flu.
"Maybe you can institute more telecommuting kinds of programs so that people who are sick can get some of their work done. We all do that anyway, we check our emails," Challenger said.
Experts say the severity of this year's flu season is partly because the vaccine proved to be a poor match for the H3N2 strain currently making the rounds. Vaccines are developed a year in advanced based on what type of strain spread that winter in the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are opposite to ours, but strains mutate. It is still, very much, an imperfect science.
"They'll be making their projections for the coming flu season in the next month and a half or so. And then the manufacturers need to start making the stuff six months like before the flu season starts," Dr. Schwartz said.
Doctors recommend people still get the vaccine, not just because it might diminish the severity of the illness, but because the vaccine protects against two types of flu. The one peaking now is influenza type A, but influenza type B will peak later in the season. It's still possible the vaccine may be a good match for that one.