Flu Season in Minnesota Remains Resilient
St. Paul, MN (KROC-AM News) - The flu season continues to rage on in Minnesota. The weekly update on flu activity from the State Department of Health still rates overall flu activity throughout Minnesota as widespread.
While the number of flu related hospitalizations continued to decline last week, there were increases in many of the indicators used by the health department to gauge the level of flu activity. One of the more notable increases involved probable outbreaks reported by schools. They jumped up from 23 the previous week to 40 last week.
The health department also reported a rising number of people seeking health care for flu-like symptoms and an increase in the percentage of specimens submitted for lab testing that came back positive for influenza. In fact, the positive result rate week exceeded 26-percent, which is the highest it has been since the start of the flu season.