BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - It's National Flu Vax Week, and doctors are reminding everyone to consider getting the shot to protect yourself and your family against the virus.
"Right now, in the Baton Rouge market, we are seeing a large amount of influenza that has come around probably in the past two weeks," Lance Fudickar, Director of Advance Practice Practitioners for Premier Health Louisiana, said.
Fudickar says flu is on the rise and will only get worse as the holiday season continues.
"Generally, what happens as our children get out of school and go home for the holidays, travel with Thanksgiving, we'll see another bump with the travel season coming up again, people shopping in the malls, you know, masses of people being together," Fudickar said.
According to the CDC's Weekly Influenza Surveillance Report from November 23, Louisiana is in the high range, only second to Washington D.C.
"Maybe because we're the melting pot, I don't know, a lot of things come in and out of Baton Rouge, football games, college football games from two universities are here. We have New Orleans where people travel against between here and Baton Rouge often and work down there, so we're exposed to a lot of different dynamics," Fudickar said.
Fudickar says getting your shot now is the best way to increase your chances of avoiding the virus.
"The flu shot is probably the premier way to protect yourself and for the particular strain of flu," Fudickar said.
He says it's not just the flu you need to look out for this year.
"We're seeing an unprecedented amount of mycoplasma and pneumonia so those patients generally can have viral like symptoms and rash maybe some diarrhea fatigue, cough, low-grade fever, negative flu, negative COVID," Fudickar said.
If you're feeling bad or come down with any of those symptoms, you can do a telehealth appointment with Lake Urgent Care or get swabbed from your car.
"Be mindful of what you do, shop when you need to shop, be sure you get your Christmas shopping and all and be careful exposing yourself to people that you might see coughing, people that are running fever and chills, come and get swabbed for the flu so we don't continue to transmit it," Fudickar said.
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