This year, Isela Sanchez thought she had beaten the flu bug. By February, the fever, body aches and chills that historically had haunted her during the early winter months hadn't arrived.
Then came Super Bowl Sunday. Her family noticed that she wasn't cheering or screaming as she usually does during football games. Her throat was sore, and she knew exactly what that meant. Her doctor diagnosed her with influenza.
"I think it just started later this year. I got my family sick and I got the people upstairs sick," she said, referring to her co-workers at Eisner Pediatric and Family Medical Center south of downtown Los Angeles.
She is in the unlucky minority this year.Despite delays in the delivery of the influenza vaccines in 2000 and 2001, Southern California has had a steady drop in the number of influenza cases compared to past years.
Experts attribute the change to factors ranging from better access to the flu shots to a decrease in travel and an improvement in the way vaccines are created.
There were 170 influenza cases reported in Los Angeles County during the winter months of 2000-2001, said Dr. David Dassey, deputy chief of the acute communicable disease control unit at the county health department. Only 18 have been reported since the 2001-2002 flu season began in November, a little more than 10% of the previous season's number.
"In a good flu season, we would have three to four hundred [reported] cases," he said.
The rate has been low nationwide too, although 13 states reported widespread influenza outbreaks this month, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics.
The statistics are only an indicator, not a precise measure, of what is actually happening. It is too costly for each state to test each patient who comes to the hospital with flu-like symptoms, and some who become ill do not to seek medical attention at all. Statistics are based on the reports from selected laboratories, mortality cases and doctors who volunteer to send cultures from patients who come in with respiratory problems and a fever of at least 100 degrees, said Carl Stevens, an emergency medicine physician at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Stevens directs the hospital's fast-track flu program, which was designed to expedite the treatment of influenza patients. It emerged from the 1999-2000 epidemic when emergency rooms across the state struggled to treat an overload of patients with respiratory problems.
