NJ flu cases are on the rise. Experts expect a worse season than the past 2 years

That season of headaches and fevers, muscle aches and fatigue caused by the flu has arrived in New Jersey. Visits to hospital emergency rooms and doctors' offices for flu-like symptoms have increased since the beginning of October and are higher than they were at this time last year.

Nationally, kids seem to be leading the way as the flu season gets off to an early start. And in this third winter of COVID, experts are warning that the influenza virus could infect more people than in the last two years.

Now is the time, if you haven’t done so yet, to get your flu shot, experts say.

Large-scale returns to work and school, the end of mask mandates and the enthusiastic resumption of travel and in-person socializing create the ideal environment for viruses to spread. In addition, natural immunity is down after the past two years’ mild flu seasons.

“Vaccination is the best defense we have against the worst outcomes of getting the flu,” said Dr. Debra Houry, an official at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet each year fewer than half of Americans get flu shots.

And in a mirror of the racial inequities revealed so starkly by the COVID pandemic, hospitalizations for flu have disproportionately affected Black, Hispanic and American Indian/Native Alaskan populations over the last decade, research published Wednesday by the CDC found.

Not coincidentally, those populations are less likely to be vaccinated than whites and Asian Americans.  During the last flu season, the report said, vaccination rates among white and Asian adults were 54%, while Black adults had a 42% vaccination rate, Native Americans a 41% rate, and Hispanics a 38% rate.

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“Every year in the United States, flu causes millions of illnesses, hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths,” Houry said. “People from certain racial and ethnic groups still fall behind in vaccine coverage, which has contributed to putting these groups at higher risk of hospitalization when they do get sick with flu.”

The causes of the disparities vary. Members of these communities may lack access to health care or health insurance. Their health care providers may have missed opportunities at check-ups or other visits to offer the flu shot. They may mistrust the medical system or believe misinformation about the risks and side effects of the vaccines. Higher rates of chronic disease also cause members of some minority groups to be more vulnerable to severe illness, whether it is COVID or flu.

Annual flu shots are recommended by the CDC for everyone 6 months old or older. In the two weeks after the shot, flu antibodies surge. Then they gradually wane at a rate that varies by age. For most people, effective protection lasts three months. One shot a season is the norm.

In New Jersey, flu hospitalizations peaked at 4,052 in 2018 and dropped to 190 in 2021. The number of cases reported to the state Health Department was much higher — 40,586 in 2018 and 3,565 in 2021 — and showed that Hispanics were disproportionately affected.

Most of the cases of flu reported in New Jersey and the rest of the United States this year have been caused by influenza A, which tends to strike older people harder. That matches reports from Australia, where the flu season has already peaked and subsided.

It’s still too early to say how well this year’s flu vaccine matches the flu strains appearing in the United States, said Carla Black, an epidemiologist with the CDC’s immunization services division. Last year’s vaccine was about 35% effective in the United States, she said.

On average, flu shots are 40% to 60% effective in preventing flu. But “even people who do get sick after being vaccinated are less likely to have severe outcomes like hospitalization and death,” she said.

“We’ve had two mild flu seasons,” she added. “This means we might be ripe for a severe flu season.”

The level of flu activity reported in New Jersey for the week ending on Oct. 15 was low in every region except the southwest, where it was moderate. That includes Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Salem counties. One long-term care facility in the southwestern region of the state has reported an outbreak.

No children have died from influenza in New Jersey over the last three years, but two died in the 2019-2020 season and six in the previous season. Nationally, a variety of respiratory illnesses, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), have led to crowded conditions in some emergency departments.

In 2021, adults in New Jersey were slightly less likely to get a flu shot than in the United States as a whole — 45.2% of New Jersey adults compared to 48.4% of U.S. adults. As in the rest of the nation, whites were more likely to get a flu shot, at 52%, with Blacks less likely, at 43%.

People aged 65 and older, who are at higher risk for severe illness from the flu, were much more likely to be vaccinated.

The vaccine is available as an injection, or with some exceptions as a nasal spray for people aged 2 to 49.

Pfizer, maker of the most commonly used COVID vaccine, announced last month that it was launching a Phase 3 clinical trial of a flu vaccine that uses a similar technology to its COVID vaccine. This mRNA vaccine platform uses a small piece of genetic material to provoke an immune response. If results from the ongoing study of 25,000 participants show it is effective, this new type of vaccine may offer a faster way to respond to the seasonal variations in flu types.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: As NJ sees flu cases rise, experts urge vaccination