The Latest Breaking News from Influenza

Richard Pebody said while the virus is ‘not new’ and the risk to the public remains low, its features have changed in recent years.

Infectious disease outbreaks have a bad habit of piling on at the worst possible times.

Five years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a global pandemic. The novel coronavirus, dubbed SARS-CoV-2, began as a “cluster of severe pneumonia cases of unknown cause” reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It had spread to 118,000 cases reported in…

A CDC report has revealed that nine of 68 of children who died of flu this year had brain damage, but it's unclear whether this influenza-associated encephalopathy is on the rise.

So far this year, 86 children have died from influenza

Early data suggest that the 2024-2025 flu shots have effectively lowered rates of flu hospitalization and outpatient visits in vaccinated people.

In February 2025, flu rates spiked to the highest levels seen in at least 15 years, with flu outpacing COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified this flu season as having “high” severity…

Flu across the U.S. is at moderate to very high levels this year

Agriculture Victoria says H7N8 strain of avian influenza has been detected at a poultry farm at Euroa