Flu Hits New York Weeks Early, With Children Leading the Surge

New York's flu season has arrived weeks ahead of schedule, and children are driving the surge. State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald declared influenza prevalent statewide last week — a designation that didn't come until December last year. More than 10,000 laboratory-confirmed cases have been logged so far this season, a figure health officials acknowledge is a significant undercount because it captures only people who tested positive in a lab.

In New York City, flu infections are climbing across every borough and every age group, but the sharpest rise is among children: in a recent reporting week, positive lab tests in kids outnumbered those in adults between 18 and 64, according to city health department data. Cases are especially concentrated in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and along Manhattan's East Side from Gramercy Park to the Upper East Side.

Statewide, laboratory-confirmed cases are up roughly 400 percent compared to the same period last year, according to Hudson Valley Post. In the most recent reporting week, cases jumped 19 percent to 3,526, bringing the season-to-date total to over 6,500 at that point. Influenza A accounts for approximately 90 percent of confirmed cases. The CDC has noted that flu hospitalizations nationally have reached their highest level for this time of year in 16 years, and that flu activity is growing or likely growing in 44 states.

Hospital systems are already feeling the pressure. At NYU Langone Health, the share of patients testing positive for flu more than doubled in recent days, from 3 percent to 8 percent.

It really has been a bump up.— Dr. Michael Phillips, Chief Hospital Epidemiologist, NYU Langone Health

The dominant strain this season is H1N1, and public health experts have flagged a mutation in the circulating virus that could reduce the effectiveness of this year's flu shot. Still, doctors are urging people not to skip vaccination. Dr. Roy Gulick of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center said the shot would still likely offer a degree of protection, and warned against the common practice of waiting until late October to get vaccinated.

The advice is often to wait till the end of October. This year, that is not going to be the right advice.— Dr. Roy Gulick, Chief of Infectious Diseases, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center

People should get their flu shot as soon as possible.— Dr. Roy Gulick, Chief of Infectious Diseases, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center

That message appears to be landing. A month ago, flu vaccinations across New York State were running 13 percent behind last year's pace. By last week, the state Health Department reported that vaccinations had overtaken last year's rate, with nearly 3 percent more doses administered compared to the same point last season. In New York City, more than 260,000 children have received flu shots so far — a similar number to last year at this time — though at the current pace, only about 40 percent of city children would be vaccinated by the end of winter, according to Dr. Andrea Howard, the city Health Department's deputy commissioner of disease control.

This season also brings a new option: the FDA recently approved the first mRNA flu vaccine, though it is authorized only for people aged 50 to 64. The mRNA approach — which instructs the body to produce a fragment of a virus to trigger an immune response, rather than using a weakened or inactivated virus — is the same technology used in COVID-19 vaccines. Public health experts hope it will allow future annual shots to be more precisely matched to circulating strains.

Last flu season produced a severe December spike in New York City that sent nearly 10,000 people to emergency rooms in a single week. That season was dominated by H3N2, a strain with mutations that helped it evade the immune system. Dr. Phillips described it as a 'flu bomb' that produced a relatively short but intense season running from November through January. This year's earlier start, combined with the child-led case counts and the H1N1 mutation, has experts watching closely for whether a similar or worse spike could materialize around the holidays. Other respiratory viruses — RSV and COVID — are currently either flat or declining in New York City, according to NY1.

Why it matters — An unusually early flu season dominated by a vaccine-mismatched strain is hitting New York's children hardest, and doctors say the window to get vaccinated — before what could be a severe holiday-season spike — is narrowing fast.

Reported by dnyuz.com, northwell.edu, lohud.com, hudsonvalleypost.com, ny1.com