1. Seeing as it's a Friday in what typically would be #flu season, here's a flu update, from week 4 data (ending Jan. 28) from @CDCgov.
There continues to be almost ZERO flu activity in the country. So much for the "twindemic" (knocking wood right now) people were warning about.

2. Last week there were only 25 positive #flu tests reported in the entire country. So far this year there have been 1300 — out of >half a million tests administered.
#Covid19 activity could be masking some flu, but people are getting tested. They aren't testing positive.

3. To put those last numbers in context, this time last year there were 12,700 positive cases in the week and more than 100K positive cases to that point in the flu season.

4. So far this flu season, 155 people have been hospitalized with lab-confirmed flu illness. That's a rate of 0.5 per 100,000. Last year at this time, there had been 8633 people hospitalized, for a rate of 29.7 per 100,000.

5. In fact, there are so few flu viruses being detected that @CDC hasn't started publishing weekly updates assessing whether the viruses in the 2020-21 flu shot were well matched to circulating viruses or if the viruses were developing resistance to flu drugs.

6. The pediatric death toll from #flu remains blessedly low this season. To date only one child has died from #influenza.
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