US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) new flu data cause concerns among health experts.
The report, which was put on hold by Trump administration due to pausing of nearly all scientific communication coming from health agencies, was released on Friday to the public, as reported by NBC.
As per the latest data, the flu rate has raised in many areas of the country, with the number of emergency room visits related to influenza also increasing.
This information was not reported in its usual weekly briefing of flu activity by CDC, known as FluView, but was added to a section dedicated to respiratory illnesses.
Among emergency room visits, nearly 5.2% were for the flu, with the department seeing a surge in number of people, especially children, suffering due to the virus.
Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau in New York, while criticising the latest hold of reporting, shared that hospitals relay heavily on CDC’s weekly update to prepare for what’s coming, as he revealed, "It gives us a certain sense of what will happen."
Along with that, the report shared on Friday, didn’t have any details physicians and health experts expect from Fluview, nor did it provide a way to compare the spread of influenza in different areas.
"Communicable diseases can suddenly spread quickly,"said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University.
"It can be a situation where the flu is slowing down in one jurisdiction while speeding up in another," he added.
The CDC latest report was also missing any mention of H5N1 or bird flu, with the rise of sick wild birds, the federal agency did not share any update about new cases.
