Bay Area Sees First Cases Of Flu Amid The COVID-19 Pandemic

BAY AREA, CA — Gov. Gavin Newsom has called the combination of the coming flu season and the COVID-19 pandemic, a "twindemic." And it might be arriving sooner than officials predicted.

Hospitals in the Bay Area have already reported some of the region's first confirmed cases of influenza, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday. Flu season typically doesn't hit the California until December or January, but healthcare professionals were already gearing up for a widespread flu season amid any other respiratory viruses that come into the circulation.

Public health officials have urged people over the last several months to get a vaccination against influenza before it's too widespread to control.

“Even a mild flu season is disastrous on top of what is already an uncontrolled pandemic,” Dr. Charlies Chiu, head of UCSF’s infectious diseases division, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re not handling COVID-19 very well. A few thousand flu cases could be enough to overwhelm our hospital system.”

According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, the agency has worked with vaccine manufacturers to have an extra supply of flu vaccines available for the fall and have already begin distributing the vaccine in some areas.

During the 2018-2019 flu season, an estimated 35.5 million people contracted the virus, resulting in 490,600 hospitalizations and 34,200 deaths in the U.S., according to the CDC.

To keep hospitals from becoming overcrowded, the CDC and public health officials have recommended getting a vaccination as early as September or October.

Adding onto that, the state has also said it would ramp up both influenza testing and COVID-19 testing.

Newsom told reporters on Aug. 26, that he planned to combat the double threat by accelerating testing production and processing by partnering with diagnostics agency PerkinElmer, to allow the state to produce an an additional 150,000 coronavirus tests per day with a guaranteed turnaround of 24 to 48.

In August, the state was conducting an average of around 100,000 tests per day with a week-long turn around to receive results — the new partnership would significantly increase access to testing, Newsom said.

The production and processing costs of the current tests are "jaw-dropping," Newsom said.

In August, Health and Human Services Director Dr. Mark Ghaly offered an ominous glimpse into the fall flu season as California saw a steep drop in children being vaccinated compared to last year.

"California is running at only two-thirds the vaccination level we were at the same point in 2019," Ghaly said Aug. 18.

The plummet in child vaccinations could open up exposure to a buffet of contagious diseases other than influenza and COVID-19 this fall.

Kaiser Permanente and other providers have already opened flu shot clinics this month, many of which are outdoor drive-up or walk-up.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health offers a map of where to find vaccine clinics and is available here.