The 2021-2022 influenza season has not been as active as in past years.
This might be because of those in the public who received flu shots and continued to practice of safety protocols that were implemented during the coronavius pandemic, a local expert explained.
“This year is pretty mild compared to previous years, but there are more cases that we had during the previous flu season,” said Dr. James Castillo, health authority for Cameron County. “But we haven’t had a spike like in a typical year compared to pre-COVID like 2019, season and 2018. The spikes were much bigger—and this one was maybe a third as big of what we usually get.”
During the 2018 and 2019 influenza seasons, reports of 10 to 15 percent of the public getting the flu were recorded as compared to 2% in winter of 2020 and 4% in the summer of 2021. This year, the case total went up to nearly 6%, which is still lower than it was in 2018 and 2019. Current numbers show cases at 3%.
“That’s not bad compared to previous years at all,” Castillo said.
Influenza comes on suddenly between 1 to 4 days, and its symptoms are fever or feeling feverish chills, cough, sore throat or runny nose, headache, muscle and body aches and tiredness.
Although the flu season usually happens between October and May, it is not unusual for it to occur in the summer months as it did last year where there was spike, Castillo said. “We didn’t have spike in winter.”
Castillo said getting the COVID-19 vaccine has nothing to do with flu prevention but getting the flu vaccine does.
“People did get the flu vaccine,” he said. “It may not have been a good match this year, but still there are lot of people taking precautions against COVID and so that is going to spillover into helping of influenza.”
The precautions Castillo referred to are that people continued to wear face masks, practiced social distancing and the constant washing of hands and using hand sanitizer, which were the protocols that were established to help stop or reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
“Still there a lot of limitations on travel and people are traveling as much as they use at least internationally, and there’s a lot of screening for illnesses and I think that has helped contain it,” he said.
Health officials anticipate there could be an uptick in flu cases during the summer versus a spike in the number of cases.
“It is definitely still circulating; definitely we haven’t had a spike, if people haven’t gotten their flu vaccine yet it’s still pretty reasonable to do it since now the cycles seem to be all off,” he said.
Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said mask wearing is optional, Castillo said people who are vulnerable to infectious diseases should continue to wear them to protect themselves.”
