Healthy Living: Local News
Are You Sick? CDC Confirms- Indiana Hit Hard With Flu
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Story Updated: Feb 8, 2011
FORT WAYNE, Ind., (Indiana's NewsCenter) - The numbers are climbing of Hoosiers being diagnosed with the flu.
In fact, health administrators are calling it an "epidemic."
Allen County Health Commissioner Doctor Deborah McMahan says if you haven't gotten a flu shot yet, this week is the time to do it.
Doctors' offices and emergency rooms have seen an influx of patients with true influenza in the past few weeks and she says to prevent it from further spreading through the community, you can do your part by getting vaccinated.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has moved Indiana into what it calls the "high" and "wide-spread" categories.
The Hoosier state is one of 11 states on that list. According to the report, researchers collected used the number of visits to health care providers for influenza-like illness to measure the activity level within a state to come up with the numbers.
The flu usually comes on suddenly. Common symptoms include:
fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, and headache.
Flu vaccines are widely available in the area. There have been 6 deaths attributed to the flu in Indiana.
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