Just as the 2024 Carnival season is getting started, Louisiana hospitals are overwhelmed with flu and COVID-19 patients and cases are still rising, health officials say.
Emergency department visits for flu-like illnesses were higher than they’ve been in more than a decade during the week before Christmas.
According to the most recent data from the Louisiana Department of Health, nearly one in five patients recently sought care care for either the flu, COVID or RSV.
And infection rates have likely not yet reached their peak, health officials say, as hospitalizations for flu and COVID continue to rise.
“It's a very, very high number and very taxing on the healthcare system,” said Dr. Joe Kanter, state health officer with the Louisiana Department of Health.
Flu season still not at peak
Dr. Sandra Kemmerly, medical director and infectious disease doctor at Ochsner Health, said Ochsner's emergency departments and primary care clinics statewide are “swamped” with patients experiencing respiratory illness.
“It's not surprising — it's flu season and we see this every year, an uptick in flu in the winter time, but coupled with the rise of COVID cases and RSV ... there's just a lot of people that are sick and so it's challenging,” she said.
Flu infections are on the rise across the country. According to a Centers for Disease Control heat map that shows flu symptoms across the U.S., Louisiana has among the highest levels.
This CDC map shows flu rates are very high in Louisiana and across the Southeast during the last week of 2023.
The past few flu seasons have been relatively mild in Louisiana, particularly during peak COVID when people were taking extra precautions, Kanter said.
“Unfortunately, our luck has run out in that regard,” he said. “The place we are right now in this current flu season actually exceeds any point in the past five years, and we've not yet peaked.”
Between Dec. 17-23, 14.2% of ER visits were for flu–like illnesses, the highest level of activity in more than a decade and double that of the national average, according to the Department of Health. The following week it went down slightly, to 13.5%. In a typical year, that rate is 3.7%.
ER visits for flu-like illnesses for 2023 in Louisiana
The flu positivity rate dropped to 21.3% in the week leading up to Dec. 30, down from 26% the week prior. Still, hospitalizations are on the rise for both flu and COVID.
For the week ending in Dec. 30, there were 374 new flu patients admitted to hospitals across the state and 357 for COVID. That's up from 298 new flu patients and 313 new COVID patients the week before.
Hospitalizations for flu-like illnesses for 2023 in Louisiana
This season, 27 flu-associated deaths in children across the U.S. have been reported to the CDC, including one in Louisiana.
Dr. David Janz, director of medical critical care services at University Medical Center in New Orleans, said there was a marked increase in hospitalizations in November, which exponentially worsened in December in the city's emergency rooms.
More patients who come in with flu-like illnesses are becoming severely ill and needing treatment in intensive care units, he said. At UMC, about 20% of ICU patients have the flu.
“Probably some of the sickest patients we have in the intensive care unit right now are patients that are sick with influenza,” he said.
According to the CDC, there have been 6,500 flu-related deaths this season.
“This is shaping up to be a pretty significant flu season, especially for the southeast United States,” Janz said.
A silver lining?
Meanwhile, ER visits and positive tests for respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, have been decreasing for several months. Three pediatric deaths have been reported in Louisiana this season.
The early peak of RSV by the beginning of December was a “silver lining” in the bad flu season, Kanter said.
Heading into Mardi Gras season, Kanter advised that people in risk groups such as the very young, very old or those with underlying health conditions should consider skipping large gatherings or wearing a high-quality mask, though he said those precautions are “not a blanket edict” for all Louisiana residents.
Kemmerly attributed high flu prevalence to low vaccination rates among Louisianans and urged anyone who has not gotten a flu shot to do so, particularly as the vaccine is a good match for the most prevalent strain.
“We still see, unfortunately, fatalities every year from the flu on an average flu season in Louisiana,” Kanter said. “We see somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people die, and a lot of those deaths are preventable primarily with the flu vaccine.”