Flu might be the last thing on your mind… unless you were one of the 1,300 people who suffered through it in June. The number of cases is unusually high and the Arizona Department of Health doesn’t know why.
"Every season, flu is really unpredictable," said Jessica Rigler with the DHS. "And so it’s difficult to know exactly what’s going to happen. Most years we’ll see a peak in cases around February or March, this year we saw a really small peak at that time, but the virus seems to be lingering."
DHS monitors flu activity year round, and usually about 200 cases of flu are reported during the month of June. Last month, however, was different. The agency said there were over a thousand cases of confirmed flu.
“Every year, we’ll generally see a shift in the strains that are circulating," said Rigler. “So we usually see more Influenza A at the beginning of the season and more Influenza B at the end of the season, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing as well, it’s just that there’s more of it out there.”
Rigler said she doesn’t know why there are so many cases. July is also shaping up to be an active month. During the last week of June and first week of July, there were 98 cases of flu. Last year at that time, there were five.
