Orange County Has the Flu

It started with the sniffles and then came the fever.

It’s official: Orange County has the flu.

The first two confirmed cases of the season involve school children in Lake Forest and Santa Ana this week, said Dr. Matt Zahn, Medical Directory for Epidemiology for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

“We are having influenza, to a low degree, in Orange County right now,” he said. “Now is the time to do something about it.”

It takes two weeks for the flu shot to provide full protection, so, ideally, residents in Orange County should already be vaccinated.

After last year’s virulent strain combined with a flu vaccine that turned out to be a weak match for it, health officials are optimistic that this year’s flu vaccine is a stronger match.

“We’ll probably get it right this year,” Zahn said.

Last year, the prominent influenza strain was slightly different genetically than the strain used in the vaccination, making it less effective, he said. Private manufacturers pick and mass-produce the year’s flu vaccines well before the October-May flu season begins, and sometimes the most prominent strain turns out to be different than expected.

However, there are already signs that this year’s vaccine is a good match. Nationwide, the start of the flu season has been light so far.

The problem, said Zahn, is that people are often complacent when it comes to the flu possibly because it is so widespread. It kills more people every year than the high profile diseases such as measles and West Nile Virus. On average, 5,000-10,000 people die from the flu each year in the United States, Zahn said. Some years, the flu claims nearly 50,000 lives.

The most vulnerable people are the very young and old, pregnant women and people with medical conditions.

“Complacency about the flu is just natural, but it is a serious disease, and we will have thousands of deaths,” Zahn said. “The vaccine is just a good way to protect yourself.”

Despite popular misconceptions, there is no way to get the flu from the vaccine.

In some cases, the vaccine may cause people to feel sore or suffer a low-grade fever, but those side effects are not the flu, which feels worse, said Zahn.

Pregnant women, children under two, senior citizens and people with serious health problems should see a doctor at first sign of a flu-like illness. Antiviral medications have proven effective at lessening the severity of the flu if taken within the first two days of the infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC recommends everyone over the age of 6-months-old get the flu vaccine each year. It also recommends other common sense habits to stay healthy and prevent the spread of the disease, including routine hand washing, coughing into your sleeve and staying home from work when you are sick.

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