By Steve Garbacz
Herald Republican

INDIANAPOLIS — The flu-tracking season is now more than half over and Indiana has yet to see any significant impact from influenza this year.

In the fourth week of the new year and 18th week of what will be 33 weeks of flu tracking this year, flu activity remains “minimal” across the state, the Indiana State Department of Health reports.

Flu activity for the week ending Jan. 30 again received the state’s lowest activity rating, with just 0.81% of visits to outpatient care centers being reported as complaints of “influenza-like illness.”

Flu rates have been almost completely flat at that rate or just below 1% for the entire season and have not seen a winter spike as is typical in most years.

The state recorded 352 more incidents of influenza-like illness, taking the season total to 9,722 reports this flu season.

There have been three deaths attributed to flu this year, with no new deaths reported this past week.

State health officials have noted that interventions being taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, such as masking, social distancing and staying home when ill, are likely to have beneficial impacts in reducing the spread of influenza.

The state also notes that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic may be affecting whether Hoosiers visit health care providers if they are sick or if they’re riding out illnesses at home without seeking treatment or professional opinion.

The state reported 0.81% of visits to outpatient care centers were for influenza-like illness, which is down slightly from 0.86% last week. Rates rose to nearly 2% around the end of November, but have been in slow decline since to below 1%, where it’s held for about the last five weeks.

Indiana usually sees another spike around this time of year, with past years running about 3-5% and as high as around 8% in the particularly severe 2017-18 flu season.

Flu numbers didn’t move much when COVID-19 cases across the state were surging in November and December but likewise haven’t changed much even as that other respiratory virus has fallen off in January and into February.

Influenza-like illness reports from emergency rooms and urgent care clinics are also down a little bit this reporting week to 0.72%. That’s also low compared to recent years, with rates at 1.5-2% in more minor years but closer to 5-6% during the more major flu outbreak years in recent history.

Indiana’s three deaths is historically low for this time of year, but it’s only slightly lower than other low-flu years in the recent past.

The state logged 136 flu deaths in the severe 2017-18 season by this point and 45 deaths in 2019-20. But in other years deaths had hit 20 in 2018-19 and just 10 in 2016-17 at this point, so the three this year is lower but not too far off from other minor-impact years.

The state typically averages around 150 flu deaths per year, although that number can vary significantly. The state had 103 flu deaths in 2016-17 but 336 in 2017-18.

The state has not identified any particular strains of flu through testing at the Indiana State Department of Health lab yet this year, although specimen testing numbers are lower than in previous years, as the state has been primarily focused on fighting COVID-19 this season.

This story is made available through the Hoosier State Press Association.