Flu cases on the rise amid holiday travel, gatherings, latest CDC data shows
Stock photo of a sick child. Natalia Lebedinskaia/STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Flu activity is increasing across the U.S. amid holiday travel and gatherings, according to the latest data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC estimates there have been at least 4.6 million illnesses, 49,000 hospitalizations and 1,900 deaths from flu this season so far, according to data updated as of Dec. 19, and experts expect these numbers will continue to rise.
Public health experts previously told ABC News that many of this season’s cases are linked to a new flu strain called subclade K — a variant of the H3N2 virus, which is itself a subtype of influenza A — that has been circulating since the summer in other countries.
Of the 163 samples of H3N2 viruses collected since Sept. 28 and genetically characterized, 89% were subclade K, according to the CDC.
Additionally, three pediatric flu deaths have been reported so far this season, according to an ABC News tally.
Last season, the U.S. saw 288 children die from flu, which is the same number of children who died during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. About 90% of kids who died from flu last year were not vaccinated, a CDC study published earlier this year found.
Meanwhile, New York state is reporting the highest number of flu cases it has ever recorded in a single week.
“The emergency room has been busy, and we’ve been following these numbers,” Dr. Darien Sutton, a board-certified emergency medical physician and ABC News medical correspondent, told “Good Morning America” on Monday. “Just a note, national numbers typically lag during the holiday, but state health department numbers are giving us insight to just how severe this flu season is.”
A total of 71,123 flu cases were reported for the week ending Dec. 20, according to the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH). This marks the highest number of flu cases in a single week since it became mandatory for states to report in 2004.
This is also 38% higher compared to the previous week which saw 51,365 infections reported, bringing the total flu cases reported in the state to 189,312.
Hospitalizations climbed by 63% in the most recent week, increasing from 2,251 to 3,666 weekly admissions, according to data from NYSDOH.
Sutton said it’s important to understand that flu is present and to take steps to reduce risk, including masking, washing hands with soap and water and getting the flu vaccine.
Currently, the CDC recommends that everyone aged 6 months and older, with rare exceptions, get a flu vaccine.
The federal health agency states on its website that getting an annual flu shot prevents millions of illnesses and flu-related doctors’ visits every year and is especially important for those at higher risk of serious complications.
“The flu is so much more than a simple cold. I am treating it in the emergency room,” Sutton said. “Understand that people are coming in feeling like they are so sick that it has to be something else than the flu.”
Sutton noted that he is seeing more people in the emergency room and more people being hospitalized but that the disease itself is not more severe, adding “it’s not like a super flu.”
Jayanta Bhattacharya, director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Last week, the Trump administration announced it was banning the use of human fetal tissue from some abortions in federally funded medical research.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said the policy would go into effect immediately and advance “science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease,” NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement.
Scientists told ABC News that research using human fetal tissue has contributed to understanding diseases better, such as HIV and Ebola, and helped in the development of some vaccines and drugs.
Some scientists worry the ban could prevent groundbreaking discoveries about the behaviors of certain diseases and stop the development of life-saving therapies.
“It’s not a scientific decision,” Dr. Lawrence Goldstein, a professor emeritus of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. “It’s a moral decision that places the rights of fetal tissue that would be discarded above the rights of sick people who will benefit from that research.”
How human fetal tissue has been used
Human fetal tissue has been used to study serious diseases and disorders, including AIDS, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, dengue, Ebola, hepatitis C, diabetes and spinal cord injuries.
Cell lines have been created from human fetal tissue that have led to the development of vaccines for rubella, rabies, chickenpox, shingles and hepatitis A. Research has also led to the development of drugs to treat HIV, hemophilia and sepsis.
President Donald Trump himself benefited from the research: the experimental antibody treatment he took to treat COVID-19 was developed using cells derived from human fetal tissue. At the time, Trump praised the treatment as a “cure.”
The tissue has been also used in reproductive medicine research to study fertility issues, pregnancy issues, and pregnancy conditions such as pre-eclampsia.
Goldstein said that human fetal tissue research also helps create humanized mouse models to study human immune systems.
“Using fetal tissue, you can make mice that have human blood-forming and immune systems,” Goldstein said. “And that’s valuable because a lot of the viruses that trouble human health don’t grow properly in mice. But if you can make mice with human blood and immune systems, those viruses will frequently grow, and you can learn how to make therapies to block them.”
There are very strict guidelines that researchers have to follow when using human fetal tissue, ensuring they are in compliance with federal and sometimes state requirements.
Additionally, the research must be reviewed and approved by the NIH’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), which specifically assesses federally funded research that uses human subjects.
The IRB assures that donation and reception of human fetal tissue were done with consent and not coercion and that there were no enticements provided to the participant, the clinic or the research team.
A researcher with knowledge of the matter, who asked that their name not be used due to fears of retribution, told ABC News that federal law states that donation cannot be even brought up to a pregnant individual deciding to terminate their pregnancy before the decision to terminate.
“These are extremely important guardrails that are in place to ensure that everything is handled properly,” the researcher with knowledge of the matter said.
Impacts of ending NIH funding
The Trump administration first instituted a ban ending all human fetal tissue research at NIH in 2019, but it was reversed by the Biden administration in 2021.
The current ban stops NIH funds from supporting all “grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards and research and development contracts,” the agency said in a statement.
Some groups praised the Trump administration’s new policy, including the Independent Medical Alliance, a group that promoted unproven treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is no ethical justification for performing experiments on tissue derived from aborted human beings,” Dr. Joseph Varon, president and chief medical officer of the Independent Medical Alliance, said in a statement. “The fact this practice continued for years within federally funded research institutions shows just how far removed parts of HHS had become from foundational medical ethics. This correction is long overdue.”
However, some scientists say the ban will affect ongoing and future work.
Dr. Anita Bhattacharyya, an associate professor of cell and regenerative biology in the school of medicine and public health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said she was hoping to apply for a future NIH grant to study human fetal tissue research and will now not be able to do so.
Bhattacharyya explained she currently uses human-induced pluripotent stem cells, which are reprogrammed cells that are similar to embryonic stem cells, in her work. However, the loss of NIH funding for human fetal tissue research could affect future work.
“My reaction was, ‘How are we going to do some of our research if we can no longer use human fetal tissue?'” she recalled to ABC News. “In particular, my lab studies Down syndrome and so we know that in Down syndrome, the brain develops differently to lead to the intellectual disability that people with Down syndrome have.”
Bhattacharyya said human fetal tissue is valuable when studying Down syndrome or neuropsychiatric disorders because it can recapitulate what’s happening in brain development.
“And so that’s where the human fetal tissue really provides us with a benchmark or the ground truth so that we can validate our models,” she said.
Finding alternative methods of funding is another issue, scientists told ABC News. The NIH was the largest funder of research involving human fetal tissue, and no longer financially supporting such research may leave scientists scrambling to find other donors.
Goldstein said there are private disease foundations that will sometimes fund human fetal tissue research, such as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which funds stem-cell-related research in California.
However, experts say the hole left behind by the lack of NIH funding cannot be made up through private donations.
“There’s really nothing adequate to substitute for the federal effort,” Goldstein said. “It is the largest funder of medical research in the United States. It has systems in place to regulate quality and ensure that ethics and scientific principles are being adhered to. We really can’t move ahead as efficiently as we would like with the absence of the NIH.”
Although the NIH said tissue from spontaneous abortions will still be available, the researcher with knowledge of the matter said this tissue is very often not suitable for research purposes.
“The reason is because, most often, spontaneous abortion happens as a result of some sort of genetic abnormality or some injury, infection, some kind of damage to the fetus itself, that renders that tissue completely unusable for scientific research,” they said.
“Additionally, because spontaneous abortions are just that, they’re spontaneous and therefore completely unpredictable,” the researcher continued. “We have to be very careful in the way that we handle that tissue. It makes those studies intractable. And so, for that reason, spontaneous abortions are not a suitable replacement for fetal tissue research that we would normally obtain.”
A woman receives a flu vaccination, October 15, 2025. Alejandro Martinez Velez/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Flu activity is increasing across the country, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New York City is seeing some of the highest levels of flu-like activity across the country. States including Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas are seeing “moderate” activity of respiratory illnesses. All other states are seeing low or very low levels.
The CDC estimates that there have been at least 4.6 million illnesses, 49,000 hospitalizations, and 1,900 deaths from flu this season so far.
The bulk of flu illnesses so far are being linked to the new variant known as subclade K, according to hundreds of samples sent to the CDC. Of just over 900 flu samples, roughly 90% were A(H3N2). Of those that had further genetic testing, nearly 90% belonged to subclade K.
The mutations seen in the new variant result in a mismatch with this season’s flu vaccine composition, the CDC notes. Experts believe that the flu vaccine will still help reduce the risk of severe illness, including hospitalization and death.
Two pediatric flu deaths were reported this week, bringing the total to three for this season. Last season had a record tying 288 die from flu – the same number during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. It’s the highest levels seen since 2004, which is when flu child deaths became mandatory for states to report to CDC.
About 90% of kids that died from flu last season were not vaccinated, a CDC study found. Flu vaccinations among kids have dropped 10% points lower than pre-pandemic with about 40% of kids getting the shot this season.
About 140 million doses of the flu vaccine have been distributed nationally so far this season, compared to 128 million last season.
The CDC recommends that everyone over the age of 6 months get their annual flu shot. Experts say it is not too late to get vaccinated.
In this photo illustration a girl looks at the screen of her smartphone on April 16, 2021 in Bonn, Germany. (Ute Grabowsky/Photothek via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — So-called “night owls” may face a higher risk for heart attack and stroke, a new study published Wednesday finds.
Researchers found that “evening type” people had poorer cardiovascular health scores than those who were neither “morning type” or “evening type” people and had an associated 16% higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, analyzed survey and biometric data from more than 320,000 British adults aged 39 to 74.
Participants were asked whether they considered themselves a “definite morning” person, a “definite evening” person or somewhere in between, termed “intermediate.”
Researchers then calculated each person’s heart health using the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) score. These factors include four health behaviors — diet quality, physical activity, sleep duration and nicotine exposure — and four health factors, including blood pressure, body mass index, blood sugar and blood fat levels.
“These are the factors the American Heart Association has identified as cardiovascular disease risk factors,” Kristen Knutson, associate professor of neurology and peventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine specializing in sleep and circadian rhythm research and fellow at the American Heart Association, told ABC News.
“Different people will have them in different combinations, but they are all correlated with one another,” she added.
Evening people were 79% more likely to have poor overall heart health compared with those in the intermediate group, the study found. Morning people did slightly better than the intermediate group, with a 5% lower risk of having a poor LE8 score.
Researchers found the evening people had a 16% higher risk of both heart attack and stroke. Researchers estimated that about 75% of this higher risk was explained by other LE8 factors, rather than sleep timing alone.
“It isn’t being a night owl that’s a problem,” Knutson said. “I think being a night owl who’s trying to live in a morning lark’s world is a conflict between one’s internal clock and their social clock.”
The higher risk appeared to be due to certain lifestyle behaviors and other health factors, the study found.
Nicotine use had the strongest impact on heart health, explaining 34% of the link between late bedtime and heart disease. Shorter sleep duration accounted for 14% of the extra risk, high blood sugar for 12% and body weight and diet each accounted for about 11% of the increased risk.
Behavioral effects of being a night owl were stronger in women than in men — women were 96% more likely to have lower LE8 scores compared to 67% in men, though they did not have a higher risk of heart attack or stroke.
“Women are further stressed by that lifestyle because they’re having to still get up and be the primary caregiver for family members,” Dr. Sonia Tolani, preventative cardiologist, Associate Professor of Medicine, and co-director of the Columbia University Women’s Heart Center, told ABC News.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers concluded prevention efforts should focus on improving lifestyle habits when spending more time awake at night.
“The most obvious way is to quit smoking and that’s not new advice,” Knutson says. “But sleep regularity, meaning trying to go to bed at about the same time every day and not jumping around the clock — particularly on days off — can really help lead to regular timing of other behaviors like light exposure, meals, exercise activity.”
“Prioritize the low-hanging fruit” recommended Tolani. If an hour at the gym is not doable, “maybe you can find a way to do a 10-minute walk or cut a little bit of salt from your diet. Just try to make small changes,” she said.
