Monday March 18th, 2024 11:57PM

Local flu season is 150-percent more active than last year, Gwinnett physician's assistant says

This year's flu season is two-and-a-half times more active than last year's flu season, according to numbers crunched by ChoiceOne Urgent Care, which operates facilities in Sugar Hill and Buford as an affiliate of Gwinnett Medical Center.

"This year we're seeing the H3N2 strain, which is a little bit more difficult to fight off and tends to affect the young and the elderly more aggressively," said Erica Melling, physician's assistant with ChoiceOne.

The increase in flu cases has forced some local pharmacies to sell out of Tamiflu and prescription cough medications.

While it's a fairly common refrain during flu season, doctors continue to advise the public to wash hands frequently, get a flu shot and cover any coughs or sneezes.

Melling said there's another list of tips that doesn't circulate nearly as much: what to do should someone in your house gets the flu.

"Get some (face) masks. Mask the patient as well as the rest of the family. Maybe isolate that patient into another room, away from everyone, especially small children," said Melling.

At that point it's important to clean the home, especially "touchy" surfaces that tend to get a lot of traffic in the way of germy hands, i.e. the television remote, door handles, refrigerator handles and cell phones.

"The only way that you can contract (the flu) is through the eyes, the nose and the mouth. So, usually, what happens is you touch a surface that's contanimated, and then you touch your face," said Melling.

The virus can survive in the open air longer than most other viruses, meaning germy surfaces become even more of a problem.

"Anything that somebody would touch fairly frequently, you want to make sure that these are very clean surfaces. It's much easier to prevent the flu than treat it," said Melling.

And most importantly, Melling said, should you come down with the virus, stay home until you go 24 hours without running a fever, without fever-reducing medications.

  • Associated Categories: Homepage, Local/State News, Georgia News
  • Associated Tags: Buford, Gwinnett County, sugar hill, health, flu
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