A surge in flu cases is causing several North Texas school districts to shut down their campuses. Comanche ISD and Morgan ISD have both had closures this week, and Godley ISD in Johnson County reported 650 out of about 3,000 students out sick on Tuesday, according to CBS News.
The illness is so widespread in North Texas that pharmacies are running out of Tamiflu.
Dr. Julie Trivedi, an infectious disease expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said there has been a big increase in flu cases statewide, not just up north.
“What we are actually seeing is a similar pattern to the respiratory virus season and influenza season from last year, as far as when flu cases started to peak,” she said.
Beyond the flu, Trivedi said there are cases of COVID-19 and RSV circulating.
“And then, of course, there certainly have been norovirus outbreaks and clusters of infection throughout the state and even throughout the country,” she said. “We are seeing an increase in COVID cases, though that has seemed to have maybe leveled off a little bit.
“But the flu cases have been increasing pretty steadily since around the last week of November and then really peaking around the last week of December, maybe coming down slightly over the first week or two of January, but starting to increase again.”
Trivedi said if you or someone in your family is sick, it’s important to test if you can so you know which virus you’re dealing with.
“There’s different types of treatments available depending on the virus that you may have. So we know that certainly for COVID, most individuals, if you have mild illness and are otherwise healthy, you may not necessarily need to be on treatment. Although there are treatments available such as Paxilovid, if you’re not in the hospital; hospitalized patients certainly have different protocols for treatment.
“When it comes to influenza, we do have Tamiflu available as well as another medication called Xofluza, which is a pill that has fewer days of treatment compared to taking Tamiflu.”
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In addition to at-home COVID tests, doctors’ offices and pharmacies offer flu and COVID tests, Trivedi said.
Trivedi also said the big spike in flu numbers is likely due to several factors.
“We started to have some colder weather earlier. And I think that when you have colder weather, when you have holiday times, you have a lot of individuals who are also gathering,” she said. “And so then one individual being exposed to someone else and then developing symptoms has the potential to then infect many more individuals.
“And so with the snow days that we’ve had, with the holidays that we’ve had, you’re just putting more individuals together where they might actually be exposed and then be able to get sick.”
And while the flu vaccine might still help with limiting the severity of symptoms, it doesn’t always stop infection outright, Trivedi said.
“We know that the influenza vaccine isn’t necessarily 100% protective against getting the flu, but it does really protect against the severity of flu illness as well as in individuals who might have other medical conditions, such as heart conditions or lung conditions,” she said. “It can protect against more severe illness in those individuals.”
And you should plan to keep washing your hands regularly, because Trivedi said flu season is not over yet.
“Unfortunately, I think that there may be more still to come,” she said. “We were seeing maybe a slight decrease that second week of January, but we have started to see another slight uptick over this past third and fourth week of January.”
