Nearly 5 million flu illnesses reported so far nationally, latest CDC data shows
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.
(NEW YORK) — Long-term alcohol use has been linked to higher risks of colorectal cancer, according to a study published Monday in the journal Cancer.
Researchers found that those with heavy lifetime alcohol consumption have up to a 91% higher risk of developing colorectal cancer compared with those who drank very little. That risk significantly increased with consistent heavy consumption, whereas those who quit drinking may have demonstrated decreased risk of precancerous tissue.
“The longer someone drinks, the longer their colon and rectum are exposed damage and impaired repair, both major mechanisms of cancer,” Dr. Lynn M O’Connor, section chief of colon and rectal surgery at Mercy Medical Center and St. Joseph Hospital in New York, told ABC News.
The study followed more than 88,000 adults with no prior history of cancer. Participants reported their alcohol use beginning in early adulthood and were followed for nearly a decade to track cancer outcomes.
Compared with those who averaged one drink or less per week over their lifetime, those who consumed over 14 drinks a week had a 25% higher risk of developing colorectal cancer. The link was even stronger for rectal cancer, where one’s risk nearly doubled.
Rectal cancer is “often more difficult to treat and more involved clinically, which makes screening and early identification all the more important,” Dr. Jeffrey Farma, a colorectal cancer specialist, told ABC News.
The results come as colorectal cancers are on the rise, especially in younger people.
“We’re seeing an uptick in rectal cancers. If alcohol affects the lower part of the colon differently —we need to understand why,” Dr. Fola May, a GI specialist and associate director of the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity, told ABC News.
In the study, researchers found the highest risks among people who drank heavily at every stage of life. Those who consistently exceeded recommended drinking limits across each stage of adulthood had a 91% higher risk of colorectal cancer compared with lifelong light drinkers or those with gaps in heavy drinking.
“These numbers are not guarantees, but signals to do something before it’s too late,” May said. “Colorectal cancer is one of the few cancers we can actually prevent or catch early, but fewer than 70% of eligible people get screened.”
The study also looked at adenomas —polyps that can develop into cancer. While heavy drinking was not strongly linked to adenoma risk, those who quit drinking had significantly lower odds of developing nonadvanced adenomas compared to light drinkers.
“These are modifiable risks. The choices people make over time matter, and the body can respond when those risks are reduced,” Farma said.
The results align with a growing body of evidence linking alcohol, a well-recognized carcinogen, to colorectal cancer.
Colorectal screening is recommended for all adults starting at age 45 according to the United States Preventative Services Task Force. Screening tools include annual stool tests, CT scans every five years, or colonoscopies every 10 years.
“Everyone should be screened. It saves lives, and people are dying unnecessarily when they put it off,” May said.
Those who may be at higher risk may need to be screened at an early age or more often than typically recommended.
“If you’ve had prolonged heavy drinking and you develop symptoms like bleeding or persistent changes in bowel habits, you need to be evaluated — even in your 30s,” Farma said. “That’s how we catch this early and save lives.”
Tyler Beauchamp, MD, is a pediatric resident at UNC Children’s Hospital and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
(NEW YORK) — As many as 724,000 service members, their families and veterans may rely on health care at hospitals that face financial vulnerability, partly due to cuts in President Donald Trump’s megabill, according to a new analysis.
The bill, known as HR.1, was signed into law in last summer and included sweeping changes to health care including Medicaid. Strict work requirements, reduced federal funding and tightening provider tax rules impacts hospitals that are dependent on Medicaid, increasing their risk of uncompensated care and reducing revenue.
Service members and their families — many of whom are covered by the military health insurance program TRICARE — rely heavily on civilian hospitals for health care, particularly in areas without military treatment facilities.
The analysis, conducted by researchers the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and first viewed by ABC News, looked at how many TRICARE beneficiaries may be reliant on hospitals considered at risk of financial distress under these new changes.
The researchers said many hospitals rely so heavily on Medicaid reimbursements that cuts to the program under HR.1 will affect care the hospitals provide to other patients, including those in the military community.
“We wanted to get a sense of how many hospitals are potentially at risk for becoming potentially financially unstable with the upcoming looming HR.1 Medicaid cuts,” Dr. Jose Figueroa, co-author of the analysis and associate professor of Health Policy and Management at HPSH told ABC News. “There’s a big focus on rural hospitals, but it is not just rural hospitals at risk, that we were finding that across the country, many urban hospitals are at risk.”
Figueroa said medical services that many TRICARE beneficiaries need are often only offered in civilian hospitals or in civilian health care systems. These beneficiaries are then exposed to hospitals that are potentially at financial risk, he noted.
“Military active duty service members on TRICARE and their families also on TRICARE are increasingly relying on civilian hospitals for their care, even when they’re living within a military base,” Figueroa said. “If we’re finding evidence that there are many hospitals across the country that are at risk, to what extent will that affect military personnel and their families?”
TRICARE is run by the U.S. Department of Defense for those connected to the military, including active duty members, National Guard and reserve members, military retirees and their families. It is not the same as Medicaid, although some may qualify for both.
For their analysis, the team used three different criteria to identify a hospital that might be at risk.
If more than one in four of patients being treated at the hospital are on Medicaid, given that the HR.1. cuts are disproportionally affecting those on the federal health insurance program. If the hospital is a safety net hospital, which serves a large number of patients with no insurance or with Medicaid, or a critical access hospital, which is a rural facility that provides essential health care services to underserved communities. The Altman Z-score, which is an aggregate measure of the financial health of a hospital, combining liquidity, profitability, financial efficiency and solvency measures to categorize a hospital as being at risk for bankruptcy. About 4% of hospitals were considered at higher risk of financial distress — meeting three of the criteria and about 19% were at moderate risk of financial distress — meeting two — according to the analysis.
The team then used a dataset to help to identify 8.9 million TRICARE beneficiaries and their ZIP codes.
The analysis estimated that more than 117,000 TRICARE beneficiaries are currently living on or near military installations potentially exposed to a hospital at higher risk of financial distress. Additionally, more than 607,000 are living near a hospital with a moderate risk of financial distress.
This means that more than 724,000 TRICARE beneficiaries are living in military installation ZIP codes — including bases, camps, posts, depots and stations — where at least one hospital has multiple risk factors for financial distress.
Additionally, more than 3.5 million TRICARE beneficiaries living in ZIP codes without a military installation are potentially exposed to a higher-risk or moderate-risk hospital, the analysis found.
“As a country, we should do our best to take care of the people protecting us,” Figueroa said. “Military personnel and their family members should be protected, and sometimes we have to remind ourselves that drastic cuts to our health care that affect our health delivery system also affects our active military personnel and their families as well.”
Last month, during a Senate hearing, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Wolfe said troops were struggling to get health care appointments and made reference to issues with TRICARE’s reimbursement rate for providers.
“What we’ve all seen over the length of our careers is a gradual erosion in the availability of that health care for our service members and their families,” Wolfe said, according to the Military Times.
Based on the results of the Harvard analysis, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., is launching an investigation into how the Pentagon is guiding military families through health care cuts and whether Republicans and the Trump administration consulted the Pentagon before the cuts were made, her office told ABC News first.
Warren is also pressing the Pentagon to explain how these cuts are affecting military readiness.
“Donald Trump is putting troops’ lives on the line in the Middle East while ripping away health care from their families at home,” Warren said in a statement to ABC News. “Republicans swore the Medicaid cuts in their Big Beautiful Bill were about cutting waste, fraud, and abuse — is that what they think of our military families’ health care?”
In a statement sent to ABC News, the Pentagon didn’t address Warren’s comments.
“As with all congressional correspondences, the Department will respond directly to the authors as appropriate,” a spokesperson said.
A Pentagon official also said it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on the methodology of studies not conducted by the department.
The White House didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Tylenol (Acetaminophen) tablets are sold in a drugstore in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on January 17, 2026. (Photo by Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Acetaminophen orders in emergency rooms for pregnant patients fell in the weeks after a White House briefing last year linked its use during pregnancy to an increased risk of autism, a new analysis finds.
Researchers at Harvard and Brown University looked at data from an electronic health records system with more than 294 million patient records from more than 1,600 hospitals and 37,000 clinics across the United States.
They found that orders for acetaminophen, also known by the brand name Tylenol, fell 10% between the briefing on Sept. 22, 2025 and Dec. 7, 2025, according to the analysis, published on Thursday in The Lancet.
The drop in acetaminophen fell 16% in the first month after the White House news conference and reached a low of 20% in the third week after the announcement, according to the analysis. Over subsequent weeks, prescriptions appeared to trend back to baseline by early December.
This analysis did not track over-the-counter use of acetaminophen sales, which is the most common way people purchase the medication.
Meanwhile, as acetaminophen orders fell, new outpatient prescriptions for a drug called leucovorin increased sharply for children between ages 5 and 17, the analysis found.
Leucovorin is a form of folic acid used to reduce side effects from some chemotherapy drugs and treat folate deficiency.
Researchers have also studied it as a possible treatment for some children with autism who have cerebral folate deficiency, but it’s unclear if it has a role in treating children with autism more broadly, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
At the same September White House briefing, the Trump administration announced it was starting the approval process for leucovorin as a possible treatment for autism.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted the drug as an “exciting therapy that may benefit large numbers of children who suffer from autism.”
The analysis found a 93% rise in leucovorin prescriptions in the first month after the briefing and a 113% spike in week two, meaning prescriptions more than doubled compared with expected levels. Overall, the analysis found that leucovorin prescriptions increased by about 71% from mid-September to early December.
“It is unknown whether the results reported reflect changes in patient demand or clinician decision making; nonetheless, they show the apparent power that public authority figures have to drive sudden changes in health care practices,” the researchers wrote.
Many health professionals and major medical organizations criticized the Trump administration’s assertion that pregnant women should avoid acetaminophen, claiming use during pregnancy may be linked to autism.
Studies on a potential link have not shown a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Some studies point to a possible association, but those associations often weaken or disappear once researchers adjust for other factors.
In January, a large meta-analysis of about 60 studies was published in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynecology & Women’s Health, finding no link to developmental disorders in children when expectant mothers used acetaminophen as directed.
In response to statements made by the White House, The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG) strongly rejected the claim that acetaminophen in pregnancy causes autism, calling it “highly concerning,” “irresponsible” and “not backed by the full body of scientific evidence.”
The group emphasized that more than 20 years of research show no direct link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or intellectual disability, specifically pointing to two high-quality studies.
Acetaminophen is regarded as one of the safest non-opioid pain medication for pregnant women, according to ACOG. The group adds it’s an important drug to help treat fever in pregnancy that can have negative health impacts for both mom and baby if left untreated.
“The White House briefing was an extremely unusual mechanism to communicate medical information and bypassed many standard checks on ensuring accurate messaging,” Dr. Michael Barnett, a physician and professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown and one of the researchers, said in a press release.
“The results show just how much political leaders can steer health behavior even when there has been no change in the evidence for these therapies,” Barnett said.
In a statement, Kenvue Brands LLC, the maker of Tylenol, said it was “deeply concerned” about “unfounded claims” over its product.
“It is scientifically known that untreated high fevers pose potential serious risks to a pregnancy, such as miscarriage, pre-term labor and birth, and fetal malformations.” the statement read, in part. ‘As medical organizations have recognized, acetaminophen is the safest option for pain and fever relief for pregnant women as needed throughout their entire pregnancy.”
Kenvue Brands added that there are multiple potential consequences as a result of pregnant women using acetaminophen less frequently, including higher rates of untreated fevers and use of medications that are less safe to use during pregnancy,
“Recent additional evidence has identified no increased rates of autism disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or intellectual disability among the offspring of those who used paracetamol during pregnancy,” the company stated.
Jade A. Cobern, MD, MPH, is a practicing physician, board-certified in pediatrics and general preventive medicine, and is a fellow of the ABC News Medical Unit.
