UC Avoids Flu Spike For Now, Keep Vigilance

Tennessee dealing with some of the highest flu rates seen in fifteen years, but so far, the Upper Cumberland faring well.

Upper Cumberland Regional Medical Director Don Grisham said he does not know why the region has been relatively spared as Tennessee is one of eight states with the highest incidents of flu activity. Nashville, for example, reporting high flu rates.

“It may come, you know, next week we may have a spike that hits Cookeville or Crossville or McMinnville,” Grisham said. “But typically when people get together and don’t wash their hands and in the winter months that typically tends to happen with, they call it a herding effect, you know, you’re inside more.”

Grisham said the spike is likely in part due to a decline in the vaccination rate since the pandemic. Grisham said the rate was close to sixty percent before the pandemic and it is currently less than forty-five.

“If someone in your family has the flu, you’ll sort of want to maybe gently quarantine them for a few days so that you’re not in direct exposure,” Grisham said. “But flu is out there, it’s always been out there. The best thing anyone can do is get the flu shot.”

Grisham said other ways people can protect themselves are to wash their hands and avoid touching their face. Grisham said the exact timing of flu season varies year to year but people should still get vaccinated if they have not already because it could last through May.

“It’s a standard strain,” Grisham said. “Typically it’s going to be Influenza A, that’s the most common one by far. Influenza B typically in adults is a much milder form of the flu but if there are twenty people that have the flu, eighteen or nineteen of them it’s Influenza A.”

Grisham said twenty-four million people have been diagnosed and three hundred and fifty thousand have been hospitalized from the flu in the country this season. Grisham said it is estimated that fourteen thousand people have died from the flu so far, including almost sixty children.

“The interesting thing and sad thing is this is the first time since COVID that the deaths from influenza have exceeded deaths from COVID during this recent interval in the past month or so,” Grisham said.