
The flu is hitting the US hard, with 880,000 cases of lab-confirmed influenza illness, 6,900 hospitalisations and 360 flu-related deaths recorded in the nation this year.
According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the last year there was a comparable flu "burden" was 2009 during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. The flu burden is a metric used by the CDC to determine the severity of the flu.