America's North Shore Journal

New York State fol­lows the exam­ple of the CDC and its report­ing is at least a week behind at any given time. In the week end­ing Novem­ber 7 2009, flu activ­ity con­tin­ued to explode in upstate New York.

New York State is report­ing the level of this pan­demic in sev­eral ways. In labs statewide for the week end­ing Novem­ber 7, over 4,000 spec­i­mens tested pos­i­tive for the A flu virus, 99% of those test­ing pos­i­tive for flu. At the state lab­o­ra­tory, 43 of 45 spec­i­mens tested pos­i­tive for Swine Flu.

The state is also track­ing vis­its to hos­pi­tal emer­gency depart­ments for influenza like ill­nesses (ILI). In the West­ern Region, includ­ing the cities of Buf­falo, Rochester, Corn­ing and Elmira, the rate was 19.8% of all emer­gency depart­ment vis­its. This was a 10% increase from the pre­ced­ing week and a new peak for the year.

The Cen­tral New York Region, includ­ing the large mil­i­tary base at Fort Drum and the cities of Syra­cuse and Bing­ham­ton had a 19.1% ILI rate. That is an 8% increase from the pre­ced­ing week and a new peak for the year.

The Cap­i­tal Region is the area with the high­est reported ILI visit rate in the state, 22.5%. That is a 15% per­cent increase from the pre­vi­ous week and nearly dou­ble the rate from two week prior.

The Hud­son Val­ley Region and Long Island have much lower rates though the Hud­son Val­ley is now just above a 10% rate. Dur­ing the Spring wave of Swine Flu, this region reached a peak of 14% of vis­its to emer­gency depart­ments for ILI.