The influenza season has hit Allen County hard and early, creating heavy absenteeism in schools, prompting at least one school to temporarily close, and causing health officials to recommend significant restrictions on hospital visitations.
One strain of flu that is causing headaches is called H3N2. Long before the flu season arrived, a flu vaccine was developed that was designed to protect people against four different strains of influenza.
But the H3N2 strain drifted, or mutated, so the vaccine doesn't offer full protection against that strain, said Dr. Deborah McMahan, Allen County's health commissioner.
Also, the flu arrived particularly early this season. The flu season normally starts in mid-January to February, but this year cases of influenza started popping up as early as November, officials said.
"We've been monitoring it for several weeks," said Geoff Thomas of Lutheran Hospital. "A large number of people are presenting themselves in the emergency room with influenza."
That creates a threat for other people visiting the emergency room and for patients who are in the hospital, particularly those who might be undergoing chemotherapy or other treatments and have compromised immune systems, health officials said.
As a measure of how widespread influenza is this year, Thomas noted that last year, between Nov. 22 and Dec. 13, 63 people were tested at Lutheran Hospital facilities for influenza and only two tested positive.
During the same period this year, 428 people were tested at Lutheran facilities and 147 tested positive.
That prompted officials at Lutheran and St. Joseph emergency rooms to restrict visitors in the ER to one person per patient last week.
At Parkview Health facilities in Allen County, last week 15 people a day were being admitted to the hospital with influenza, and this week an average of 35 a day were being admitted. On Wednesday, 44 people were admitted to Parkview facilities, said Eric Clabaugh, public information manager with Parkview.
Health officials issued recommendations to help limit the spread of influenza, saying people who have flu-like symptoms should wear a mask if they go to a health care facility for treatment, restricting visitors to those over 18, and limiting visitors to a designated family member, spouse or partner, or spiritual counselor.
The department also said people who have flu-like symptoms, including fever, cough and muscle aches, should not visit anyone at a health care facility.
Allen County is not alone. Last week, St. Vincent Hospital, citing the prevalence of influenza, announced similar restrictions at its facilities in and around Marion County.
The early flu season has also caused absenteeism to spike in local schools.
Krista Stockman, a spokeswoman at Fort Wayne Community Schools, said absenteeism is normally very low this time of year. But this year, nearly every day in the last month there has been at least one school that has reported absenteeism of 10 percent.
At Most Precious Blood School on Barthold Street, which has about 270 students, one-third of the students were absent one day earlier this month and some classes had half the students absent, said principal Stanley Lipinoga.
School officials said they decided that because of the high absenteeism they'd just have to teach the same lessons again the next day, so they closed for a day and maintenance staff scrubbed the entire school.
When school resumed there were still about 70 absences. About five absences a day is normal.
McMahan noted the flu is extremely contagious. "It can lay dormant on doorknobs for hours," she said.
McMahan is also unsure whether the new H3N2 strain of influenza is a mild or nastier version.
"It's still not clear how virulent it is," McMahan said.
McMahan said people who get the flu sometimes think they can tough it out and go to work or school, but they just end up spreading to others, including some who might not be able to handle a case of influenza. She recommended that people who do get the flu call their doctor and get a prescription to help fight it off.
McMahan also noted that a perfectly healthy person who gets influenza can get worn down by the flu and become susceptible to more serious diseases such as pneumonia. As it stands, there is a pertussis, or whooping cough, outbreak underway, and people who get the flu and don't try to treat it could be a target for that disease.