Texas, Georgia and Washington, D.C., reported high flu activity for the week ending Sept. 24, according to the CDC's FluView report.
Seven CDC updates:
1. For the week ending Sept. 24, 739 lab-confirmed flu patients were admitted to the hospital.
2. No states reported very high flu activity for the week ending Sept. 24. Texas, Georgia and the District of Columbia reported high flu activity. Hawaii and Puerto Rico reported moderate activity. Eight states — New Mexico, Virginia, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey — and New York City reported low flu activity and the remaining states reported minimal flu activity.
3. Two flu-associated pediatric deaths that occurred earlier this summer were reported to the CDC for the week ending Sept. 24. A total of 39 flu-related pediatric deaths have been reported during the 2021-22 flu season.
4. Clinical laboratories tested 50,292 specimens for influenza for the week ending Sept. 24. Of those, 1.3 percent were positive, most of which for influenza A.
5. The percentage of visits to an outpatient provider for influenza-like illness — meaning fever plus cough or sore throat, not lab-confirmed flu — was 2.2 percent for the week ending Sept. 24.
6. Nationwide, 0.2 percent of 14,528 long-term care facilities reported at least one flu-positive test among residents for the week ending Sept. 24.
7. The national flu, pneumonia and/or COVID-19 mortality rate is 8.7 percent, which sits above the epidemic threshold of 5.6 percent for the week. Among the 2,035 deaths reported for the week, 1,014 had COVID-19 and six had the flu listed as an underlying or contributing cause of death. This indicates the current death rate for pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 is primarily due to COVID-19, the CDC said.