Influenza deaths estimated at 80,000 people in the US last season

It is estimated that 80,000 Americans died of the flu and its complications last winter – the highest death rate of the disease in at least four decades.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with the Associated Press.

The influenza experts knew that it was a very bad season, but at least one found the size of the estimate surprising.

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"It's huge," said Dr. William Schaffner, vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University. The count was almost twice what health officials had previously considered a bad year, he said.

In New Jersey, thousands of people became ill and three children died. Emergency rooms have been invaded by an influx of patients who have put many facilities at full capacity. And some pharmacies lacked some flu shots. The total number of deaths in New Jersey is unknown.

In recent years, deaths related to influenza have ranged from about 12,000 to 56,000, according to the CDC.

Last fall and winter, the United States experienced one of the worst flu seasons in its history. It has been caused by a kind of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths, especially in young children and the elderly.

The season peaked in early February and ended in late March.

Pushing a bad year, the flu vaccine was not working very well. Experts say vaccination is still worth it because it reduces the severity of disease and saves lives.

"I would like to see more people get vaccinated," Redfield told AP at an event in New York. "We lost 80,000 people last year because of the flu."

CDC officials do not have exact figures on the number of people who die each year from the flu. Influenza is so common that not all cases of influenza are reported and flu is not always on death certificates. The CDC therefore uses periodically revised statistical models to make estimates.

Fatal complications of the flu can include pneumonia, stroke, and heart attacks.

CDC officials have qualified the 80,000 preliminary figures, and they could be slightly revised. But they said that there should not be a decline.

It overshadows the estimates for each flu season going back to the winter of 1976-1977. Estimates for several previous seasons were not readily available.

Last winter, however, was not the worst flu season. The 1918 influenza pandemic, which lasted nearly two years, killed more than 500,000 Americans, historians say.

It's not easy to compare flu seasons throughout history, partly because the country's population is changing. There are more Americans – and older Americans – now than in past decades, noted Dr. Daniel Jernigan, a CDC flu specialist.

US health officials are scheduled to hold a media event in Washington Thursday to highlight the importance of vaccinations to protect against the flu that circulates this winter.

And what will be the situation? Until now, the flu detected is a less severe strain, and early signs indicate that the vaccine is reporting well, Jernigan said.

The vaccine composition has been modified this year to try to better protect against the strains expected.

"We do not know what will happen, but we are seeing more encouraging signs than at the beginning of last year," said Jernigan.

NJ Advance Media Staff Writer Spencer Kent contributed to this report.