BOSTON (WHDH) - The flu virus has been associated with the deaths of three children across Massachusetts in recent weeks, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
The department said a child died the week of December 21, and two other deaths were reported Monday.
“Some of those children have underlying medical conditions, but some don’t,” said Larry Madoff, Medical Director of the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
“Pediatric influenza deaths are always something to watch carefully because obviously a death in a child is an aggregate, more years of life lost than a death in an older adult,” said Dr. Paul Sax, Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Both are tragic, but it’s particularly tragic in children.”
Twenty nine adults have also died from the virus this flu season.
According to state health officials, there were nearly 9,000 emergency department visits statewide each day last week, with about a quarter of those linked to respiratory illnesses.
Doctors said this is the second consecutive year the state has had increased flu activity.
Sax said the flu season started earlier than it usually does, and a new strain of the flu is causing symptoms that may be more severe.
“Usually a couple of days after exposure to a flu case, people start to feel the symptoms,” Sax said. “If you compare it to last year, which was actually a very severe flu season, we didn’t start seeing this degree of flu activity until mid to late January. Here, it started in late November and ramped up quickly during the holidays.”
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health encourages everyone six months and older to get a flu shot.
“The flu shot is not 100 percent effective, everybody knows that, but it does seem to diminish the severity of influenza,” Dr. Sax said.
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