I had emailed California Public Health Dept regarding and updated and received this.
Thank you very much for your inquiry. We did not have an Influenza Surveillance report for Week 51 (December 16-22, 2012) for last Friday due to lack of reports during the holiday period. We will instead have a combined Week 51/52 (December 16-29, 2012) report posted on our flu website this upcoming Friday. We have seen steadily increasing flu activity based on many parameters (lab detections, Kaiser flu inpatient data, and outpatient influenza-like-illness) and plan to report ?regional? flu activity in California for Week 52 (December 23-29, 2012). The CDC CSTE definition for ?regional? influenza activity is ?Outbreaks of influenza or increases in ILI and recent laboratory confirmed influenza in at least two but less than half the regions of the state with recent laboratory evidence of influenza in those regions.? It is difficult to determine if and when California will be hit as severely as the Southern and Midwestern states. As you are aware, influenza is unpredictable and activity could increase at any time! We will do our best to keep our website updated and to keep the public informed.
The CDPH influenza team
Thank you very much for your inquiry. We did not have an Influenza Surveillance report for Week 51 (December 16-22, 2012) for last Friday due to lack of reports during the holiday period. We will instead have a combined Week 51/52 (December 16-29, 2012) report posted on our flu website this upcoming Friday. We have seen steadily increasing flu activity based on many parameters (lab detections, Kaiser flu inpatient data, and outpatient influenza-like-illness) and plan to report ?regional? flu activity in California for Week 52 (December 23-29, 2012). The CDC CSTE definition for ?regional? influenza activity is ?Outbreaks of influenza or increases in ILI and recent laboratory confirmed influenza in at least two but less than half the regions of the state with recent laboratory evidence of influenza in those regions.? It is difficult to determine if and when California will be hit as severely as the Southern and Midwestern states. As you are aware, influenza is unpredictable and activity could increase at any time! We will do our best to keep our website updated and to keep the public informed.
The CDPH influenza team