At the end of December, New York saw one of its worst single weeks for flu hospitalizations in years, while states like Connecticut have seen a similar surge.
In Massachusetts, the latest numbers show the Commonwealth could surpass last flu season's record hospitalization rate. WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief James Paleologopoulos spoke with experts who say the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better – and that there’s still time to get a flu shot.
Dr. Esteban DelPilar of Baystate Health says it’s been a rough flu season in western Mass. so far, with cases adding up quickly – and that was before the holidays arrived and mass gatherings got underway.
“Just to kind of give you an idea - I am seeing, right now, at least two patients that have the flu and have … superimposed bacterial pneumonia with staph aureus, which tends to be a fairly bad complication,” he told WAMC on Wednesday, describing some of what he and his colleagues have been seeing in Springfield. “The fact that I've seen two in one single week and that's just me - I know that my colleagues here in the hospital also has similar patients - that tells you a lot of how intense this flu season is starting out.”
DelPilar spoke with WAMC right before the latest influenza case numbers were released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
At the time, for the week of Dec. 14, five percent of hospitalizations involved influenza. A week later, it’s nine percent – on track to surpass last flu season’s peak of 10.5 percent: a season that featured "the highest cumulative influenza-associated hospitalization rate since the 2010-2011 season," according to the DPH.
That’s all to say that influenza is back and wreaking havoc. Influenza deaths are also on the rise, hitting 30 as of the week of Dec. 21, up from 20 a week prior.
This season’s low vaccination numbers are also a concern, DelPilar adds.
“If we are seeing significant activity from the flu already, this early in the season, and we're seeing a lot of people coming in with significant infections that require hospitalization - if on top of that, you add that a significant portion of the population is not really getting vaccinated, that just puts a larger chunk of our community at risk of getting severe flu or significant complications of the flu that might end up bringing them into the hospital,” he said
As of Dec. 27, only 34.1 percent of Massachusetts residents have received a flu shot. It’s a step below last flu season’s 38.5 percent, which DelPilar called a “horrible number” in a February interview with WAMC.
Dr. Zachary Binder, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at UMass Medical Center, says the flu shot issue has been a tricky one this year.
The annual vaccinations are often developed to tackle what could be the predominant strain(s) of the upcoming season. This year has featured a bit of a "mismatch," with the current offerings not matching the most dominant strain very well, especially the subclade K variant making headlines across the country.
“… that being said, all recommendations from the CDC and elsewhere are still to get the flu shot and that it does, even with that mismatch, incur protection against hospitalization and death,” the associate professor of pediatrics at UMass Chan Medical School told WAMC Friday. “As pediatricians, we're usually exceedingly pro-vaccine across the board and there's no exception to the flu shot.”
For now, the age-old advice remains the same: wash your hands, get your shot, and if you find yourself under the weather, mask up and drink plenty of fluids. When it comes to subclade K, Binder adds, that last bit can be particularly important, especially for kids.
“Specific to subclade K… it has kind of manifested in some different ways than prior flu. Most notably … we are seeing quite high fevers, 104°-105° which can be disconcerting to families and rightfully so,” he said. " The thought used to be that… the height of the fever had portended worse outcomes, that a fever to 105° was worse than a fever to 102° and that hasn't really borne out to be the case. But what we do find is that, not unlike adults, when kids have high fevers, their interest in drinking and their thirst is greatly diminished. So… the best and most important thing is to really drive the fever down with… Motrin, Tylenol and fever-reducing medications, and when that fever is down, really pushing the fluids.”
Binder adds that, for now, the state’s spike in influenza cases is relatively isolated compared to other respiratory diseases, with not much overlap. While cases of RSV and COVID-19 are generally on the rise, the DPH indicates they’re making up a combined 2% of emergency department visits at most.
COVID-19-wise, despite a low vaccination rate of 11 percent this season, cases have not yet risen to last year’s levels, with 1,600 cases confirmed as of Dec. 27. That’s 300 less than the same period last year and far less than the 5,300 cases confirmed in 2023.
“Generally speaking, viruses kind of peter out over time, so we're not seeing [large] numbers of sick people with COVID, which is nice,” Binder noted in a phone interview. “That's not to say there couldn't be a variant that pops up, but… at least this winter, it's really been the flu that's been hammering people and leading to the volumes that we're seeing.”
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This piece originally aired on Friday, Jan. 2, 2026.
