State health leaders warn of virus risk, urge vaccination

Seen increases in people reporting cough, fever, chills, aches, sore throat and runny nose, officials said, citing a text-based health survey.

- 

PHARMACIST Ani Martirosyan prepares an immunization. California health officials believe the flu will be the dominant virus fueling hospital admissions.

(BRIAN VAN DER BRUG Los Angeles Times)

The test positivity rate for rhinoviruses and enteroviruses, which typically cause the common cold, is 19.87%. That’s higher than that of the virus that causes COVID-19, 4.2%; or the flu, 1.04%.

In San Francisco, doctors have seen the number of colds being reported in the hospital double, Chin-Hong said. Some workplaces in the Bay Area have seen a number of employees call out sick.

With RSV, flu and COVID-19 rates expected to climb by the holidays, “this is a perfect time to get immunized,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in an email.

The fall and winter of 2024-25 brought the nation’s worst flu season in many years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of children who died from flu last season was the highest since the H1N1 swine flu pandemic season of 2009-10, according to a recent report published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Officials reported 280 confirmed deaths among children last season, and about 9 in 10 of those kids were not vaccinated.

Health officials became particularly concerned about reports of a rare, severe complication that targets the brain — influenza-associated encephalopathy, or IAE, which was reported in 109 children nationally last season.

Three in four children with IAE needed intensive care treatment. The median age of children with IAE was 5, and 55% of those diagnosed with the condition had no underlying health conditions.