Child death toll rises from flu in US as surging cases are breaking grim records

The child death toll from flu rose again this week as cases of super flu continued to surge across more than a dozen states.The nationwide tally ticked up to nine, with health officials in Ohio and Kentucky reporting their states’ first pediatric flu deaths.The Ohio Health Department said an unidentified teenager in Greene County had passed away following infection. It was unclear if the teen had been vaccinated for the flu, but the department stressed the importance of getting a flu shot. “It’s not too late to get a flu vaccine. It could prevent you or your loved ones from getting seriously ill,” Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said in a statement. Officials in Kentucky said a child who had passed away from flu in Kenton County had not received this year’s vaccine. The Kentucky child has also not been identified.“This is a heartbreaking reminder that the flu is not always a mild illness, especially for young children and people with high-risk medical conditions,” Dr. Steven Stack, the secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services at the Kentucky Department for Public Health, said in a release.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone over the age of six months old gets an annual flu shot to prevent serious illness. The announcements come on the heels of the deadliest non-pandemic flu season for U.S. kids on record and the worst flu season in nearly 15 years last year.This year, the agency estimates that there have been 7.5 million infections, more than 81,000 hospitalizations and 3,100 flu deaths across the country.Hospitalizations have spiked rapidly, nearly doubling from 9,944 to 19,053 from the week of December 13 to week of December 20.A map from the CDC shows the current flu hot spots are in Colorado, Louisiana, South Carolina and New York.New York is facing one of its worst flu seasons ever, with officials reporting a new high in week-to-week cases before Christmas, up by 38 percent, according to WNBC. "We are seeing the highest number of flu cases ever recorded in a single week in New York State," State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said. In the West, Colorado is seeing a record number of hospitalizations, with nearly 800 people now hospitalized with flu, according to CPR News, up by 250 from the previous week.“The 782 new flu-related hospitalizations reported for the week ending Dec. 27 is a record for raw numbers of influenza hospitalizations reported in one week since we started tracking influenza hospitalizations in 2004,” Hope Shuler, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, told the outlet in an email. “We saw a similar rate of hospitalization (40 per 100,000) during the 2024-2025 season, but that figure wasn’t reached until roughly four weeks later, in late January,” she said.The majority of cases tied to hospitalizations in Colorado, New York and elsewhere are due to H3N2, a subtype of the influenza A virus. The H3N2 strain is associated with more hospitalizations and deaths in older people. It also emerged widely after flu vaccines were finalized for the season, leading to fears the vaccines could be less effective this year.“It’s not very well aligned with the vaccine this year, which means there is potentially a larger proportion of the population that is susceptible to the flu,” Neil Maniar, director of the master of public health program at Northeastern University, said in December. Still, getting the vaccine is important to prevent serious illness, he noted. More than 130 million American adults - or about 42 percent - have gotten this year’s flu shots, with the 2025-2026 flu season far from over.The season typically runs through the spring and last year saw cases peak in January and February. By the end of the season, there were tens of thousands of flu deaths, including 280 children. Right now, it’s too early to tell how the U.S. will fare this season.“Severity indicators remain low at this time, but influenza activity is expected to continue for several weeks,” the CDC said.