Flu prevalent in 49 states, but leveling off

(USA TODAY) -- Flu seems to be leveling off nationally though some parts of the country are still showing increases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. In general, the South, Southeast, New England and the Midwest are declining. The Southwest and the Northwest are rising.

So far this flu season, 37 children have died from the virus, according to CDC's weekly FluView. Flu is prevalent in 49 states -- Maine is the exception -- and high in 26 states and New York City.

During the week of Jan. 13 through 19, 9.8% of deaths reported in CDC's 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System were due to pneumonia and influenza. That's above the epidemic threshold of 7.3%. The rate of deaths linked to pneumonia and flu the week before was 8.3%. Most deaths were in people 65 and older.

The flu emergency that several East Coast cities including Boston and New York had declared over the past two weeks has passed, but flu cases are still "going strong," said Jim Heffernan, chief of primary care at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. While he's not seeing overflowing emergency rooms as he was at the beginning of the month, the hospital is still getting "several hundred calls a day" for people who are suffering from the flu.

"It does seem to have peaked here but there are still a lot of sick people out there," he said. "Far more than last year, probably more than we've seen since H1N1," he said, referring to the pandemic flu strain that struck the world in 2009. In that outbreak, an estimated 24% of people worldwide got the flu, according to a paper published this week in the journal Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses.

While shortages of flu vaccine are still popping around the country as the flu hits localized areas, there is still vaccine available, CDC said. As of January 18, a total of 133.5 million doses of influenza vaccine had been distributed to vaccine providers in the United States for this season.

About half of pharmacies that ran out of flu vaccine were able to get more, according to a survey done Jan. 14 through 16 by the National Influenza Vaccine Summit, a public health group that works on flu vaccine issues.