It’s peak flu season – get your shot now

“So far, so good, but we can’t be too joyful just yet”, said Dr. Caroline Teschke, public health program manager at the India Street health clinic in Portland. “People who get the flu shot can still get sick from influenza, but if they do, it is usually milder than if they had not been vaccinated”. “The number of outbreaks we’ve seen and the number of cases we’ve seen are lower but as I said, there is still plenty of flu season left in the New Year”.

There’s been around 35 cases in the area so far, but nurses at the health department said there’s likely been more that weren’t reported. “It’s pretty much impossible to get a season without influenza”, he says. “H3N2 viruses tend to mutate faster than the other influenza virus types [and] years where H3N2 dominate tend to have more cases of hospitalizations”, said Jackson, whose institute is part of the U.S. Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Network, a CDC-funded network that measures how well the vaccine is preventing flu cases every year.

There are also Food and Drug Administration approved flu vaccines that aren’t made with eggs. There were several hundred confirmed cases of flu per week in December, compared with a few thousand per week the previous December, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention flu surveillance system.

This year’s flu season is a stark contrast with 2014, when cases skyrocketed across Canada and the US due to a vaccine-resistant strain. The India Street clinic will be offering free flu shots every Friday, starting January 15, until they run out of vaccine.

Flu season typically peaks in February. But Mills said other strains could start circulating later this winter or spring.

“We don’t know why this is happening”, says Dr. Gaston De Serres, an epidemiologist with the Institut national de santé publique de Québec. “But reduce flu illness by about 50-60%”, said Davis.