The California death toll is rapidly growing as this season’s massive flu outbreak has left hospitals across the US overcrowded and pharmacies running out of medication to treat the virus.
Health officials reported 27 deaths from the flu in people younger than 65 in California since the season began in October. There were only three deaths in the state this time last year.
The emergency room at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica has had to turn away patients as more than 200 people have come in reporting flu-like symptoms, numbers that doctors haven’t seen since the 1994 Northridge earthquake that killed 57.
Pharmacies have also sold out of the medication prescribed by doctors to treat the flu due to increased demand.
California is one of the 49 states that reported either regional or widespread flu activity, excluding Delaware. There have been 70 deaths across the US, according to a CDC report from last week.
California has reported 27 deaths so far this flu-season and hospitals have begun turning patients away due to overcrowded emergency rooms
Pharmacies have been scrambling to restock their shelves with Tamiflu this flu-season.
Nihar Mandavia, a pharmacist who owns Druggist Pharmacy in Laguna Niguel told Daily Mail Online that his pharmacy has been selling an average of 30 Tamiflu per day.
‘Usually during flu season we sell maybe one a day,’ he said.
‘I’ve already gone through eight in the last three hours we’ve been open,’ he added. ‘I spent my Sunday night looking for Tamiflu for wholesale.’
Hospitals have been overwhelmed with the influx of infected patients that hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area are limiting visitors under the age of 16 as a precaution.
Other hospitals in the US have limited the age of patients under five years old as younger patients may not show signs of the flu but could be highly infectious.
Emergency rooms in and around the Los Angeles area are so crowded that ambulances are unable to immediately unload their patients.
This has prevented ambulances from being able to respond to incoming 911 calls, according to Jose Arballo Jr, spokesman for the Riverside County Department of Public Health.
Last year California had 68 deaths by the end of flu season in February.
Flu season officially begins in October but this year’s particularly dangerous strain, H3N2, has come relatively early and the season has not reached its peak yet.
‘It tends to cause more deaths and more hospitalizations than the other strains,’ said Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, Los Angeles County’s interim health officer.
The same strain was primarily responsible for sickening more than 1,000 people in Australia, where health officials estimated that vaccines only prevented some 10 percent of strains.
In light of panic over reports of the vaccine’s effectiveness, the CDC reported that it expects the American vaccine to be 32 percent effective against the H3N2 virus, but this week saw the flu become highly active in 21 states.
An estimated 9.2 million Americans have gotten sick with the flu each year since 2010.
Of those, the CDC estimates that as many as 56,000 have died from the viral infection in a given recent year.
H3N2 has been responsible for some of the worst flu seasons in the US in recent years, including the 2006-2007, 2012-2013, and 2014-2015 bouts.
There was ‘high activity’ of the flu – the highest prevalence ranking – in nearly half of the US as reported last week.
The CDC has recommended three main antivirals: oseltamivir (sold under the brand name Tamiflu,) zanamivir (Relenza), and peramivir, all of which the CDC says contain a strain of H3N2 which should be effective against this year’s version.
The nasal spray, however, is not thought to be a worthwhile preventative measure against this flu.
All anyone can do to protect themselves against this years fierce flu is to get vaccinated, cover coughs and sneezes, wash hands, get tested early, and stay home if they are sick.
Flu season typically peaks anywhere between December and March, according to the CDC.