The flu is still going around Washington. It’s not too late to get your shot

It’s late March, but the flu is still going around.

“It's a very late, long, severe season, so it's been a pretty extraordinary season,” said Dr. Helen Chu, an expert in respiratory diseases at the University of Washington. “It's the worst in over a decade.”

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To date, at least 296 people in Washington state have died of the flu since the fall. But it’s not too late to get the shot if you haven’t already.

This year’s flu shot is a good match for the virus strains that are currently going around, Chu said, but it’s important to keep in mind that it takes a week or two after you get the vaccine to have full protection. It also might be harder to find the shots because it’s so late in the flu season.

Vaccination rates are a little lower than usual this year, but not enough to explain the severity of the flu season, Chu added.

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What happened is that, with social distancing during the pandemic, people lost their immunity to the flu.

“And in the same way that we saw the other viruses come back, this happened to just be the year that flu really came back,” Chu said. “All of the people who hadn't seen flu for the last couple of years all got infected this year.”

The immunity from those infections could last well into the next flu season, Chu said — so, with many people protected from the virus, next season is likely to be much less severe.