The latest data from the influenza epidemic, week 1 of 2013, in the United States has been released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and nearly every state. The CDC data was released Jan.11 and covered the flu season from Oct. 1, 2012, to Jan. 5, 2013. The top ten states for outpatient visits for influenza-like activity (ILI) range in population from Texas with 26 million residents to Vermont with 626,000. ILI rates measure the percentage of all outpatient visits that were for ILI.
- Nebraska - 10.6 percent
- Texas - 9.76 perccent
- Mississippi - 9.4 percent
- Oklahoma - 7.9 percent
- Pennsylvania - 7.8 percent
- New Jersey - 7.58 percent
- North Dakota - 7.25 percent
- Vermont - 7 percent
- Tennessee - 6.93 percent
- New York (other than New York City) - 6.82 percent
The ILI rate for the entire United States for week 1 was 4.3 percent. Montana and Delaware reported ILI rates below 2 percent, the lowest in the nation.
The CDC also uses a network of 122 cities in the United States to measure the weekly percentage of deaths due to pneumonia and influenza (P&I). While not all the deaths reported are due to the flu, it is another indicator of the severity of the flu outbreak nationally. For week 1, 7.3 percent of the deaths were due to P&I, above the level considered epidemic by the CDC for week 1 at 7.2 percent.
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