ATLANTA — The nation’s top health agency on Friday stepped up its response to the unusually early outbreak of flu, launching response teams to states and asking all health departments nationwide to report flu deaths of children.
Characterizing the outbreak as a likely epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also sought postmortem tissue samples, autopsy reports and flu virus samples from fatally stricken children.
Earlier Friday, Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC director, said 42 children have died from the flu this season.
She said the CDC field teams will help states deal with the outbreak and evaluate the effectiveness of this year’s flu shot. The CDC also activated its emergency operations center to coordinate its efforts.
Gerberding said it’s too soon to determine how severe this flu season will turn out to be. But in response to a question, she said the number of cases — and the child deaths — indicate the outbreak could be classified as an epidemic. She said the season has followed "typical" flu patterns but started much earlier than usual.
The CDC has never required states to report flu deaths, largely because it’s hard to distinguish flu from other winter viruses. But the agency has been concerned about the number of normally healthy children dying from this year’s flu strain.
The agency has estimated that about 92 children under age 5 typically die each year from flu, but that is based on computer models and "in fact is a ballpark estimate," Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the CDC’s top flu epidemiologist, said this week.
The child deaths from flu are "very sobering and very worrisome," Gerberding said, adding that at least 16 of the children who died were ill prior to catching the flu and that more than half the deaths involved children under 5.
Twenty-one of the children were previously healthy and three developed a drug-resistant bacterial infection that complicated their flu treatment. The CDC said they had flu shot data on only seven of the deaths; only two of those children had received a flu shot.
Gerberding urged people not to crowd emergency rooms. "Flu is something that for the vast majority of people can be managed at home," Gerberding said. "It’s not necessary to seek medical attention unless there is concern."
CDC flu info: www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly.
Copyright ©2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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