New Canaan has seen an unusually strong and early flu season, health officials say.
The town “definitely had a nice peak before Christmas, unfortunately, which is not typically where we peak,” according to Health Director Amy Lehaney.
“We typically peak two weeks after the Near Year-ish,” Lehaney told members of the Health & Human Services Commission during their regular meeting, held Tuesday at Town Hall and via videoconference. “So I’m curious to see if we end up having a second peak or if we kind of just peaked early this year. But the flu numbers are way up. COVID and RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] are not. So that might be a good thing that you’re just seeing those flu numbers. But it is definitely up, and it’s up early.”
The comments came during Lehaney’s regular update to the appointed body after Commissioner Peter Campbell asked for an update on flu.
Asked whether this year has featured a flu strain that the widely offered vaccine is not addressing, Lehaney said, “I haven’t seen anything definitive come out on that yet.”
Commissioner Russell Barksdale Jr. said that 90% of the flu right now is a subgrade variant that is not covered by the most common vaccination, and that it’s “very pervasive.”
“I think we are at about 7.5 million people nationally who have been infected and tested positive for it, 80,000 hospitalizations and about 3,100 deaths,” he said.
Campbell said he personally has “seen people in their prime knocked out three or four days.”
Commission Secretary Jenn Hladick asked whether those individuals were vaccinated, noting that even if the shot doesn’t prevent the strain, it can help people avoid getting sick.
Barksdale said it’s true that “any time you get vaccinated, it does boost your immune system for a period of time.”
“But just like any other virus, if it finds its way into the host, you are going to be symptomatic and it’s how your body responds to it,” he said. “You sometimes get an overresponse to it, like people who get shingles. Your body over-responds on occasion and it can knock you out.”
Barksdale, who is president and CEO of Waveny LifeCare Network, said he has seen elderly people who always get vaccinations because they’re at risk get “knocked on their backside for about two weeks” this flu season.
“For us it’s really keeping them out of the hospital,” Barksdale said. “You are starting to see more pneumonia develop because of it—fluid in the lungs—so it is a real problem.”
Commissioner Tracey Hamill said it has seemed in the last two years that the dominant strain of flu hasn’t been covered by the vaccine. Barksdale responded that “only 20% of all strains are covered by a flu shot at any point in time.”
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