February 2016
The Flu season has arrived in Arizona and it a bad one this year.  Unfortunately, if you got this season’s 2015-2016 flu vaccine it isn’t providing protection against the most common strain of the virus, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Arizona, 84% of reported flu cases this season are from the Type “A” H3N2 virus, a strain that mutated after the flu vaccine was developed. This is a common occurrence. Last years vaccine had a similarly dismal coverage.
Public health officials typically decide in February which strains of flu to include in that fall’s vaccine. Officials began to pick up on variant strains of the disease in March. Some mutations die out and don’t cause problems. But this one went the other way and is becoming increasingly virulent and widespread.
To make matters worse, H3N2 is commonly associated with more severe flu symptoms, including fever, sore throat, aches, cough and extreme fatigue.
“It (the virus) is not a match to what’s in the vaccine,” said Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the CDC in Atlanta. “But we won’t know until the end of the flu season how much it will impact the vaccine’s overall effectiveness.”
Officials said that anyone who hasn’t had a flu shot should still get one because even with the mutation, the vaccine will provide protection against other three strains of the flu virus in the vaccine. “Some protection is better than no protection,” McDonald said. However, the other 3 strains are just not showing up significantly and are not causing many cases of the flu this season.
Currently, more than two-thirds of the confirmed Type A flu viruses that have been identified in the U.S. are a variant strain of H3N2 and not a match to the vaccine, the CDC said.
The CDC issued a bulletin last month warning that anyone with flu symptoms should see a physician immediately, and that doctors should prescribe anti-viral flu medications as an immediate second line of defense against the virus. Anti-viral medications cannot cure the flu but can mitigate its severity and lessen symptoms.
Because influenza is already widespread and the remainder of the season is expected to be severe, the CDC is now recommending broad use of expensive antiviral drugs (neuraminidase inhibitors like Tamiflu) as soon as possible if influenza is suspected, without waiting for laboratory confirmation of the diagnosis, because they are ineffective if not started within 48 hours of exposure.[1,3]
However, “If one looks at data from people who had influenza (the only group who could benefit), there was [only] a 1.25- to 1.5-day difference in median time to symptom improvement and somewhat greater benefit in ability to return to work.”^[7] These anti-viral drugs have significant side-effects, including nausea and vomiting in 10% of patients.
The flu is already widespread in 35 states, including much of the central, northern and eastern U.S. In Arizona, the number of cases is steadily increasing and has now hit “widespread” status.”

2015-2016 Arizona Flu Season Highlights

 
Those at high risk from influenza include children younger than 5 years (especially those younger than 2 years); adults 65 years and older; pregnant women; and people with certain chronic health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart or lung disease, and kidney disease.
 

Click here, to learn: What you can do to Fight the Flu Naturally