For the week ending Oct. 1, 885 lab-confirmed flu patients were admitted to the hospital, according to the CDC's latest FluView report.
The agency said all data in the FluView report are preliminary and may change as more reports are received.
Six more notes:
1. The CDC's state-by-state map of flu activity had not been updated for the week ending Oct. 1, making it unclear what flu activity level individual states reported. However, the CDC's report indicates no state reported very high flu activity, four jurisdictions reported high activity, three reported moderate activity, 11 reported low activity and remaining states reported minimal activity.
2. One flu-associated pediatric death that occurred in the spring was reported to the CDC for the week ending Oct. 1. A total of 40 flu-related pediatric deaths have been reported during the 2021-22 flu season.
3. Clinical laboratories tested 40,709 specimens for influenza for the week ending Oct. 1. Of those, 2.5 percent were positive, most of which for influenza A.
4. The percentage of visits to an outpatient provider for influenza-like illness — meaning fever plus cough or sore throat, not lab-confirmed flu — was 2.4 percent for the week ending Oct. 1.
5. Nationwide, 0.3 percent of 14,367 long-term care facilities reported at least one flu-positive test among residents for the week ending Oct. 1.
6. The national flu, pneumonia and/or COVID-19 mortality rate is 8.7 percent, which sits above the epidemic threshold of 5.7 percent for the week. Among the 2,035 deaths reported for the week, 938 had COVID-19 and five had the flu listed as an underlying or contributing cause of death. This indicates the current death rate for pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 is primarily due to COVID-19, the CDC said.