Jan 17, 2018 4 min read

The flu season hasn’t reached its peak yet, but it’s taken a toll on Washington County.

According to the state Department of Health, Washington County has among the highest number of cases in the state.

“Southwestern Pennsylvania is currently seeing the most cases of the flu in Pennsylvania,” Nate Wardle, emergency preparedness public information officer for the Department of Health, wrote in an email.

According to the health department, Washington County had 773 reported cases of the flu as of Saturday, the fifth-most among counties in the state. Allegheny County had the highest number of cases in the state with 2,982. Westmoreland County is the third-highest in the state with 965. Greene County’s total is much lower, at 75 cases. Because only a fraction of those who are ill seek medical treatment and have a positive test for the flu, the actual numbers are much higher.

“Due to patient privacy laws, we cannot give out where deaths have occurred in Pennsylvania,” Wardle wrote. “I can tell you that there have been 32 influenza-associated deaths in the state.”

Julie Ference, nurse manager for Canonsburg Hospital’s emergency department, said compared to last year’s “mild” flu season, this year is much more significant.

“Our ICU and inpatient volume has definitely increased over the last few weeks because of the flu,” she said.

Ference said Washington and Allegheny counties have a larger number of cases because they have a greater population of elderly.

“The elderly are more immunocompromised, or have a lower ability to fight off infections,” she said.

Ference, along with several other local physicians, said the reason the flu has been more prevalent this year, is because this year’s vaccine was not predicted accurately.

Dr. Kathleen Latouf, medical director of Canonsburg Hospital’s emergency department, said the particular strain of flu going around this year typically has more severe symptoms, “which may be the reason for the increase in hospitalizations.”

Dr. Bridget Peterson, a physician at Washington Health System Cecil Family Medicine and a faculty member of the Washington Hospital Family Medicine Program, said the vaccine was designed to cover the H1 type of flu virus. But the main strain going around right now, she said, is H3N2, which is not covered in the vaccine.

Peterson said the season is expected to peak by the end of January and encouraged people to still get vaccinated.

“Some protection is better than none,” she said. “It can help prevent the clinical severity of the disease like ICU admission and death.”

Latouf agreed the vaccine is the “single best prevention” for the disease. Dr. Sundeep Ekbote, chairman of the emergency department at Monongahela Valley Hospital, also said the vaccine would decrease the “intensity and duration of the illness.”

“The anti-vaccination movement is very irritating to educated people,” Ekbote said. “Just because this year’s vaccine wasn’t as effective, doesn’t mean people in health care, or the elderly or children shouldn’t be vaccinated in the future.”

He said about 60 percent of flu patients who have been admitted to the hospital so far previously received a flu shot.

“I don’t want people to interpret this as ‘Because I got vaccinated and still got sick, I’m not going to get vaccinated next year,'” Ekbote said. “That’s the conclusion that should not be drawn.”

He said aside from being vaccinated, people can be proactive by washing their hands frequently and practicing other good hygiene practices.

“It’s transmitted by direct contact and droplets from someone coughing into the air,” he said.

Peterson said for people who have had symptoms for two days, the “most important thing by far is hydration and fever and pain control.”

“If you are sick, and you’re able to go to your primary doctor instead of the emergency room, that would help us keep emergency resources available to patients that are critically ill,” she said.