(WASHINGTON) — United Airlines expects travel to surge in December as more people look to get away for the holidays.
“We’re seeing a lot of pent-up demand in our data and are offering a December schedule that centers on the two things people want most for the holidays: warm sunshine and fresh snow,” Ankit Gupta, vice president of network planning and scheduling at United, said in a press release.
To meet the demand, United plans to fly 3,500 daily domestic flights in the last month of the year — making it the airline’s largest schedule since the start of the pandemic. In comparison, United flew just 649 flights in a single day in April 2020.
“We know families and friends are eager to reunite this holiday season, which is why we’re thrilled to add new flights that will help them connect and celebrate together,” Gupta said.
In December, United will begin offering new direct flights to Las Vegas and Phoenix from Cleveland, and to Orlando from Indianapolis. United will offer up to 195 daily flights to 12 destinations in Florida this winter, the most flights to the state in company history. The carrier will also have 66 daily flights to over a dozen ski destinations across the U.S. in its schedule.
The airline expects the busiest travel days for the Thanksgiving holiday to be Wednesday, Nov. 24 and Sunday, Nov. 28. United said popular days for winter holiday travel are expected to be Thursday, Dec. 23 and Sunday, Jan. 2.
If you’re looking to travel over the holidays and have not booked yet, experts say now is the time.
“We expect that prices will remain relatively low until about Halloween, so that’s kind of the day where if you know you get to Halloween, that’s when you should definitely book if you haven’t booked yet,” Adit Damodaran, an economist at Hopper, said in an interview with ABC News. “Because after Halloween, we’re expecting prices for Thanksgiving to start rising about 40% for domestic and international flights for Christmas.”
After Halloween, Hopper said travelers should expect domestic fares to spike 40% leading up to Thanksgiving week, and an additional 25% for any last-minute flights.
(MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz.) — There was no significant 2020 election fraud in Arizona’s Maricopa County, partisan election reviewers again acknowledged in testimony before Congress on Thursday.
The state Senate-ordered review of the county’s presidential election published its findings in September, nearly 11 months after the election, and came to the same conclusion Maricopa County did: President Joe Biden won the county.
“The most significant findings of the audit is that the hand count of the physical ballots very closely matches the county’s official results in the presidential and U.S. Senate races,” former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who served as the Senate’s liaison with auditors, said in his testimony.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee had invited Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the cyber security group that conducted the review but had never managed an election audit before it was hired in Maricopa County. Logan himself had disputed the results of the election after it was certified by election officials and Congress in January, although he has since deleted the Twitter account where he posted them. He declined to appear in front of the committee to testify.
“I invited the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, Doug Logan, to testify to give him the opportunity to defend his company’s actions to Congress and the American people. Unfortunately, less than 36 hours before the hearing, Mr. Logan informed the Committee that he is refusing to appear,” committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “Clearly, Mr. Logan doesn’t want to answer tough questions under oath about the highly questionable, partisan audit that his company led.”
The review, which took over five months, was paid for largely through private fundraising groups that raked in upwards of $6 million in donations. One of the groups was run by Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, who promoted baseless conspiracies about the election.
While the report concluded there was no significant difference between the vote totals from Maricopa County showing Biden had won and the results from the review, some Republicans in Arizona, including House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., still pushed back on the results.
Biggs continued to falsely insist during Thursday’s hearing that “we don’t know” if Biden won the 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump has continued to say that the election was corrupt, despite the auditor’s findings. At a rally in Georgia late last month after the release of the audit report, he still insisted that Biden lost in Arizona.
“Headlines claiming that Biden won are fake news and a very big lie,” adding that the so-called forensic audit showed that Trump had won. “They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona when they know it’s not true. He didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona.”
Vote totals were certified across the country by bipartisan officials, and the more than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies to dispute the results of the election failed in the courtrooms, even those with Trump-appointed judges.
Two officials from Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, both Republicans, also testified Thursday. Bill Gates and Jack Sellers both spoke out against the partisan review and did not entertain the notion that the election was stolen.
Maloney played a voice message left by former President Donald Trump’s close ally Rudy Giuliani, who spent months pursuing conspiracy theories related to election fraud in some of the nation’s battleground states.
Giuliani asked if there was a “way to resolve this so it comes out well for everyone. We are all Republicans, I think we all have the same goal.”
“Let’s see if we can get this done outside of the courts, gosh,” he said.
Gates said he believed that was an attempt to interfere with election results.
“That voicemail was left at a time we were in litigation with the state Senate overturning over the ballots and the election machines. I think he was trying to get us to settle that lawsuit, so that they could very quickly get the ballots in advance of the January 6 certification of the electoral college,” Gates said.
Neither Gates nor Sellers responded to pressures from Giuliani and other Trump allies, like one from Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward to “stop the counting.”
The so-called audit has cost taxpayers at least $450,000, according to the Arizona Republic’s review of the process’ records. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs initially said that the county would need to create a new contract for its voting machines, since they were likely compromised. That was rescinded as a part of a deal the county struck with the state Senate in late September.
Audit officials and Republicans, including Trump, have alleged a number of violations were discovered in the partisan review. The county has debunked all of their claims and created a website to address the allegations made by the Cyber Ninjas.
(ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill.) — President Joe Biden renewed his call for private employers to require their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, saying “we are going to beat this pandemic” if more Americans get their shots.
“Without them, we face endless months of chaos in our hospitals, damage to our economy and anxiety in our schools and empty restaurants and much less commerce,” Biden said during a speech in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, where he toured a construction site overseen by Clayco, which is one of the Midwest’s largest construction companies and announced new vaccination requirements for its employees Thursday.
“I know these decisions aren’t easy, but you’re setting an example and a powerful example,” he said of Clayco’s new requirement.
Biden said that the U.S. is in a position to “leap forward” economically and that businesses “have more power than ever before to change the arc of this pandemic.”
“I know that vaccination requirements are tough medicine, unpopular to some, politics for others, but they’re life-saving, they’re game-changing for our country,” he said.
Biden’s remarks came just hours after the White House released a new report outlining the importance of requirements in driving up vaccination rates and helping Americans return to work.
The 26-page report says more than 185 million Americans are now fully vaccinated and that “the unprecedented pace of the president’s vaccination campaign saved over 100,000 lives and prevented 450,000 hospitalizations.”
“These requirements work,” Biden said. “More people are getting vaccinated. More lives are being saved.”
According to the White House, more than 3,500 organizations have already instituted some form of vaccine requirement, including 25% of businesses, 40% of hospitals, and colleges and universities serving 37% of all graduate and undergraduate students. They said thousands more businesses will institute requirements over the weeks ahead as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule for businesses with more than 100 workers is still being finalized.
White House COVID-19 Data Director Cyrus Shahpar also announced on Thursday that 78% of adults in the U.S. have now received at least one vaccine dose.
Biden’s visit, which was rescheduled from last week so the president could focus on infrastructure negotiations in Washington, D.C., comes nearly a month after he laid out a six-point plan to combat the pandemic, which included a vaccination requirement for federal government employees, health care workers and all businesses with more than 100 employees, which he said “wasn’t my first instinct.”
“Vaccination requirements work,” Biden said. “And there’s nothing new about them. They’ve been around for decades. We’ve been living with these requirements throughout our lives.”
The president also met with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, who implemented a requirement for employees to be vaccinated in August and now boasts a 99% vaccination rate.
Biden’s visit also comes as the president’s overall approval rating is declining, including his handling of COVID-19. In a Quinnipiac poll among U.S. adults released Wednesday, fewer than four in 10 Americans now say they approve of Biden’s overall job performance, four points lower than Quinnipiac reported in a poll three weeks ago. Meanwhile, 50% disapprove and 48% approve of his COVID-19 response.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — Hours after a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the most restrictive abortion law in the country, some Texas clinics have resumed providing abortions after a so-called fetal heartbeat is detected.
Under SB8, physicians are banned from providing abortions once they detect electrical activity within the cells in an embryo. That can be seen on an ultrasound as early as six weeks into a pregnancy — before many women even know they’re pregnant. Since the law went into effect on Sept. 1, clinics in the state have largely stopped providing abortions past that point, under the threat of potentially costly civil litigation.
After U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman granted the Biden administration’s emergency injunction to halt SB8 Wednesday night, Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics throughout the state, said it resumed providing the abortions Thursday for an unspecified number of patients.
There is a 24-hour waiting period for most patients before they can get an abortion in Texas. Since Sept. 1, the clinics have been continuing the required consent process in the event an injunction was later handed down, allowing them to offer the procedure so soon after the injunction, according to Whole Woman’s Health founder Amy Hagstrom Miller.
“Last night, we reached out to some of the patients that we had on a waiting list to come in to have abortions today, folks whose pregnancies did have cardiac activity earlier in September,” Hagstrom Miller said during a press briefing with the Center for Reproductive Rights Thursday. “And we were able to see a few people as early as, 8, 9 this morning, right away when we opened the clinic.”
“And we are consenting people for care beyond that six-week limit today and hope that we will be able to take care of those people tomorrow and beyond as long as this injunction stands,” she added.
Texas promptly took steps to appeal the injunction to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said late Wednesday. “The sanctity of human life is, and will always be, a top priority for me,” he said on Twitter.
Pending the outcome in that court, the case could make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Legal experts and abortion rights advocates were unsure if physicians would feel comfortable providing abortions following the injunction, as there is the threat of being sued retroactively under the law, if it isn’t ultimately struck down.
The retroactive provision “remains a serious piece of concern for physicians and clinics” and makes for a “tenuous” situation in the state, Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told reporters.
“But what we can say today is that there are independent providers across the state that are working to reopen full services and are doing so wary of the fact that the Fifth Circuit may take away this injunction at any moment,” she said.
Hagstrom Miller said there is “hope” but also “desperation” among patients at this time, as call volume has increased at the clinics. “Folks know that this opportunity could be short-lived,” she said.
In the wake of the injunction, Planned Parenthood’s Texas affiliates are “assessing what’s possible during this period of uncertainty,” their leaders said in a statement, while recommending that patients seeking an abortion call their local health center to discuss their options.
“This legal victory is an important first step toward restoring abortion access in Texas, but the fight is not over,” Planned Parenthood South Texas’ Jeffrey Hons, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Melaney Linton and Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas’ Ken Lambrecht said in a joint statement. “The state has already appealed this ruling and we don’t know if or when this injunction could be lifted, and the law could be back in effect.”
ABC News’ Nicholas Kerr contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine collided with an unknown submerged object this weekend while traveling through international waters in the Pacific Ocean, according to the Navy.
The Navy describes the submarine as being in “safe and stable” condition and said it is making its way to port for a damage assessment that could help determine what it struck.
“The Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) struck an object while submerged on the afternoon of Oct. 2, while operating in international waters in the Indo-Pacific region,” said a statement from the Navy’s Pacific Fleet. “The safety of the crew remains the Navy’s top priority. There are no life threatening injuries.”
USNI News was first to report the incident involving the USS Connecticut.
Two sailors aboard the submarine were treated for what a Navy official described as “moderate injuries” and additional sailors received bumps, bruises and lacerations.
“The submarine remains in a safe and stable condition,” said the statement. “USS Connecticut’s nuclear propulsion plant and spaces were not affected and remain fully operational. The extent of damage to the remainder of the submarine is being assessed. The U.S. Navy has not requested assistance. The incident will be investigated.”
Officials said it remained unclear what the submarine struck while underwater. They said it could include stationary objects like a sea mount, an underwater sea mountain, or an object being towed by a surface vessel.
Two U.S .officials said the submarine is headed to the U.S. Naval Base Guam where a damage assessment of the submarine’s hull could help determine what the vessel struck underwater.
(JOPLIN, Mont.) — A survivor of last month’s Amtrak train derailment in Montana said he “hung on for dear life” to a restroom handicap bar as the car he was in toppled on its side and skidded along a gravel embankment.
Justin Ruddell said during a news conference on Thursday that he suffered two broken vertebrae and five broken ribs in the Sept. 25 crash, and witnessed “death and destruction around me that I’ll never be able to forget.”
“I thought I was going to die,” said Ruddell, a mechanic from Klamath Falls, Oregon, adding that he also suffered injuries to his jaw and head.
The crash of the Amtrak Empire Builder train near Joplin, Montana, killed three people and injured more than 50. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration are still investigating the incident.
Ruddell and three other injured passengers filed federal lawsuits in U.S. district court on Thursday against Amtrak and the BNSF Railway Company, which owns and operates the track on which the derailment occurred. The passengers accused Amtrak and BNSF of negligence, saying the crash was preventable.
Seven other injured passengers filed similar lawsuits earlier this week.
“This derailment should not be happening in this country in 2021. It’s inexcusable,” said attorney Henry Simmons of the Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, which is representing the injured passengers. “It should be a never-event and we are going to hold Amtrak and BNSF responsible, and we’re doing it for our clients and for the future of all traveling passengers in the United States.”
It’s the third time in five years lawsuits have been filed against Amtrak for a fatal derailment.
Amtrak and BNSF declined to comment when reached by ABC News, other than the following statement from Amtrak: “We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and injuries due to the derailment of the Empire Builder train on Sept. 25, near Joplin, Mont., on BNSF railroad. It is inappropriate for us to comment further on pending litigation.”
Ruddell said he was returning home after fulfilling a promise to a friend who died: to take a trip together to the East Coast. He was traveling with that friend’s ashes in a glass container.
“It was my first experience on an Amtrak train, and I was looking forward to a comfortable, relaxing ride across the country,” Ruddell said.
Moments before the crash, he said he left the train’s observation car and went into an adjoining car to use the restroom, soon after which the train “suddenly jolted and veered on its side.”
He said it was a “miracle” he survived.
“I could look outside the train and see all the gravel and dirt and everything that was outside along the tracks getting scooped up into the car as it was skidding down the side of the tracks,” he said. “If I were to let go, I would have fallen down and out that door, and got crushed by the train or ground up in the dirt.”
After fellow passengers helped him crawl from the wreckage, he went back to rescue his friend’s ashes.
“I was supposed to start a job after I got back, which I’m not able to. The pain is unreal,” Ruddell said. “I’m not able to sleep at night. I have a hard time eating because of the injury to my jaw. I never thought this was going to happen.”
The lawsuits also seek to challenge an Amtrak policy instituted in January 2019 requiring that legal action against the company be resolved through a mandatory arbitration process. Under the change, customers, upon purchasing a ticket, waive their right to sue Amtrak for any reason.
Simmons, the lawyer, called the Amtrak arbitration clause printed in fine print on the back of tickets “reprehensible” for a rail line funded and owned by taxpayers.
“When you get on a train like Amtrak are you really thinking about a train derailing and you holding on to a handicap bar while the train doors open and you’re looking at death’s door?” Simmons said. “People don’t look at the back of the ticket.”
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 708,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 65.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.
Latest headlines:
-Biden: Vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated
-Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high
-Pfizer submits kids vaccine emergency use authorization request to FDA
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Oct 07, 4:14 pm
Biden: Vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated
COVID-19 cases are down 40% and hospitalizations have dropped 25% in the last month, President Joe Biden said Thursday during a visit to Illinois to promote vaccinations.
In the month since Biden announced a six-part plan to fight COVID-19, the president said there’s been “real progress across the board,” including with vaccine equity.
Biden said recent data shows Latino Americans, Black Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans are vaccinated at comparable rates to white Americans.
“Our work on equity isn’t done, but it is an important piece of progress,” he said.
Biden said a new report released Thursday shows vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated.
“In the past few weeks, as more and more organizations have implemented their own requirements, they’ve seen vaccination rates rise dramatically,” Biden said. “For example, the Department of Defense has gone from 67% of active duty forces being vaccinated to 97%. … We’re also seeing this at colleges… We’re going to see it in health systems around the country.”
Vaccination rates are also good for the economy as they help send people back to work, Biden said.
Oct 07, 1:37 pm
78% of adults have had 1 dose: White House
Seventy-eight percent of adults have now had at least one vaccine dose, White House COVID-19 data director Cyrus Shahpar tweeted.
Oct 07, 12:35 pm
Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high
Hospitalizations in the U.S. have dropped from 104,000 to about 69,000 over the last five weeks, according to federal data.
More than a third of the drop was in Florida, where there are about 13,000 fewer patients compared to just over one month ago.
Daily COVID-19-related hospital admissions are also down nationally by 13.6% in the last week, according to federal data.
But states like Alaska and West Virginia, are still experiencing record-breaking surges, while Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho and Texas still have ICU capacities near 10%.
Overnight, the U.S. reported nearly 2,000 COVID-19 related fatalities.
Around 1,400 virus-related deaths are being reported each day, which is nearly 7.5 times higher than in mid-July, according to federal data.
Texas is reporting thousands of deaths each week.
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Oct 07, 9:00 am
United expects travel surge in December
United Airlines expects a travel surge and plans to fly 3,500 daily domestic flights in December, making it the largest schedule since the start of the pandemic.
Flight searches for the holidays are up 16% on the airline’s website and app compared to 2019.
Florida and ski resorts are expected to be the hottest destinations.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Marshals have located and fingerprinted the Los Angeles Dodgers fan seen on camera during a televised 2016 home game who they said closely resembled a long-missing and most wanted fugitive. But they have determined he is not their man.
The identification came just 48 hours after the U.S. Marshals went public with a photograph of the Dodger fan, eager to determine if he was John Ruffo, a swindler convicted of a $353 million bank fraud, who has been on the run for more than 23 years. The manhunt for Ruffo is the subject of season 2 of the ABC News podcast, “Have You Seen This Man.”
A relative of the Dodgers fan alerted the U.S. Marshals Tuesday night that the man seated five rows behind home plate during the 2016 game was, in fact, a different person altogether. He has requested privacy so ABC News is not naming him.
To be certain the man was not Ruffo, the Marshals conducted a swift background investigation and on Thursday traveled to his home to verify fingerprints. The read out proved it – they had the wrong guy.
The discovery put an end to one of the most vexing aspects of the manhunt – a lead that for more than five years remained unresolved for the U.S. Marshals. It meant the investigators would have to turn their attention to other leads in the decades-long search for Ruffo.
“The ones that are the worst are when you have no resolution. That’s what bothers me, is that you just don’t know, is that him or not? The Dodgers footage, is that him? Is that Ruffo? Or is it not?,” said Deputy Marshal Danielle Shimchick, the lead investigator on the Ruffo case.
Short and balding, the unassuming one-time computer salesman is now 66 years old. He is believed to have fled with approximately $13 million. There has not been a confirmed sighting of him since he stopped at an ATM in New York City in November 1998, the day he was supposed to report for a 17-year prison term. His car was found at New York’s JFK Airport.
The look-alike baseball fan from the L.A. suburbs had put his hands on some terrific seats, placing him just off center frame every time the television feed of the game focused on the batter. It was in that prime location that he caught the eye of John Ruffo’s cousin, Carmine Pascale, of New Hampshire.
Pascale was watching the Dodgers-Red Sox game on television on Aug. 5, 2016, when he said he spotted the familiar-looking man seated four rows behind home plate.
“I’m watching and right behind home plate, they did a close up of the batter and there’s Johnny. And I said, “Holy Christ, there he is,” said Pascale, a cousin who last saw Ruffo after his arrest in 1998. “And I immediately called the Marshals. I froze the frame, kept it right in front of me.”
He phoned the tip into the US Marshals, who had placed him on the agency’s 15 most wanted list.
Deputy Pat Valdenor, an L.A.-based Marshall, was assigned to followed up on the initial tip. He said it’s rare to get a tip accompanied with video evidence. He said the resemblance was strong.
“It does look like him. It could be him,” Valdenor said. “So that was my starting point. That was the lead that I got.”
Valdenor sought help from the Dodgers, who identified the seat in Dodgers Stadium where the man had been seated: Section 1 Dugout Club, Row EE, Seat 10. He sought through baseball team’s help in identifying who bought the ticket.
The Dodgers identified the ticket holder, but he had given the ticket away. The coveted seat behind home plate passed through so many hands, Valdenor spent weeks tracking the ticket but was ultimately unable to track it to the man who actually attended the game.
It was Valdenor who traveled to a Los Angeles suburb Thursday to fingerprint the man who had attended the game.
“You can clearly see the difference between the fingerprints,” Valdenor said. “Even without the fingerprints, there was the birth certificate, and I had his whole family in front of me — three generations. I could see it wasn’t Ruffo.”
Even though the manhunt for Ruffo goes forward, he could be satisfied that he had not missed a chance to catch Ruffo.
This report is part of Season 2 of the ABC News podcast, “Have You Seen This Man?,” hosted by “The View’s” Sunny Hostin. It follows the U.S. Marshals’ ongoing mission to find John Ruffo, who engineered one of the most outlandish frauds in U.S. history, vanished in 1998 and has never been found. A four-part Hulu Original limited series on the global search for Ruffo is currently in production from ABC News Longform. MORE HERE
(ARAB, Ala.) — Four people, including a 4-year-old, have died in devastating flooding in Alabama.
Up to 13 inches of rain fell — with rates as high as 5 inches per hour — in Jefferson and Shelby counties, which includes Birmingham and hard-hit Pelham.
A 4-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman died as a result of the flooding in Marshall County, located in northern Alabama, the county coroner’s office said.
In Hoover, near Birmingham, a 23-year-old-woman and 23-year-old man were found dead in their submerged car Thursday after being swept away in floodwaters Wednesday night, Hoover police said.
In Pelham, fire officials said they responded to 282 calls for service. Officials conducted 82 rescues from homes and over a dozen rescues from cars.
Schools in Pelham are closed Thursday due to the excessive flooding. A flash flood watch remains in effect through Thursday night.
The flash flooding threat is expanding Thursday into Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida.
Residents in Panama City, Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta and Asheville should be prepared for flooding.
East of Asheville, rainfall rates of 2 to 4 inches per hour have been reported. A state of emergency was issued in McDowell County, North Carolina.
By Friday, the Southeast will finally start to dry out as the heavy rain shifts into parts of the Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic.
(NEW YORK) — The flu season is notorious for being difficult to predict. However, flu trends from last year and from other parts of the globe can help us make informed estimates.
So far, experts are on the fence if this year’s flu season may be mild like last year’s, or if it may take a turn for the worse. But experts do agree on one thing; we can do our part by getting vaccinated.
And according to newly released U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, about 52% of the U.S. population got a flu vaccination last flu season, which was similar to the prior season. The CDC and other public health agencies are trying to get even more people vaccinated this year because experts are worried about a worse flu season this year because population immunity is low due to a mild flu season last year.
“We are preparing for the return of the flu this season. The low level of flu activity last season could set us up for a severe season this year,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, speaking during a press event hosted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
With many Americans staying home, washing hands and practicing social distancing, last year’s flu season saw the lowest rates of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths from the flu since the CDC started recording this data in 2005.
“It was the lowest influenza season we’d had in memory. It was really virtually no influenza,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease and preventative medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University, told ABC News.
Dr. Richard Webby, director of a World Health Organization Influenza Collaborating Center and infectious disease specialist, adds that it may be a “global phenomenon.”
“I think international travel has been low so, you know, just infected people moving around the globe and seeding other geographic spaces has been reduced,” Webby told ABC News.
And these changes have meant that there have been lower levels of the flu virus globally.
“The flu hasn’t really circulated for three successive seasons: southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said.
The southern hemisphere – South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand – experiences its flu season during our summer. Their flu patterns can give us an idea of what to expect come fall in the U.S. And this past summer, the southern hemisphere experienced another low flu season.
“The flu is often in a cycle between the northern and southern hemispheres,” Adalja told ABC News. “There’s a high likelihood that it could also still be a mild flu season just because there’s less flu circulating on the planet, in general.”
But as COVID restrictions continue to evolve, southern hemisphere flu patterns may be less helpful for knowing what lies ahead. For example, COVID-19 restrictions are easing up in many places in the United States, but remain in place in parts of Australia, which is often a litmus test for the flu.
“I think that, generally speaking, we turned to, you know, other parts of the globe to make better predictions, and the unfortunate situation now is, given the complexity of COVID restrictions, travel pattern changes, it makes it a little bit more difficult to have a complete predictive lens on what might happen,” said Dr. John Brownstein, infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and ABC News contributor.
And as more people get vaccinated and return to work and social gatherings, along with children returning to school, there is a real possibility that this year’s flu season may be worse than last year’s.
“When they are infected with flu, they shed very large amounts of virus, more than adults and for longer periods of time,” Schaffner said. “They are a real distribution mechanism for the virus.”
Along with the potential for more spread, we may have slightly lower immunity to the flu.
“We have been through one and a half seasons, with no real flu circulation. So, it’s also possible that, as a population, our immunity to flu is a little bit lower,” Webby said.
Faced with the possibility of a worse flu season, experts said the flu shot is crucial.
“Go out, get your flu shot. This year, continue being protected,” said Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist in Chicago and ABC News contributor.
Newly released CDC data highlighted some alarming new trends. Only 59% received the flu shot last season compared with 64% the prior season. And racial and ethnic disparities widened, with 56% of white Americans getting the flu shot, compared to 43% of Black Americans and 45% of Hispanic Americans.
The flu shot is not a 100% guarantee that you won’t get the flu, but it will reduce your symptoms, and the likelihood of winding up in the hospital.
“We want to prevent severe hospitalizations and death, but we want to prevent symptomatic infection, too,” Bhatt told ABC News. “Symptomatic infections can keep people out of work, can make you feel miserable.”
If you are eligible for a COVID vaccine booster, that is a great time to get your flu vaccine as well, health experts like Dr. Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Alabama and Director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic said.
“It’s perfectly fine to get them both at the same time,” Goepfert told ABC News.
And for those who worry they may get sick from the vaccine, Goepfert added, “I know a lot of people say they get sick and they got, you know, flu from the flu vaccine and that’s just not possible.”
Experts also encourage pregnant women to get the flu vaccine.
“That’s a group that, you know, if they get any of these viral infections, they can do poorly if they don’t have adequate protection,” said Dr. Simone Wildes, associate director of infectious disease at South Shore Health and ABC News contributor.
And with the uncertainty of the coming flu season looming, the CDC and other government health officials are now encouraging all eligible Americans to sign up for a flu shot, and help prevent a possible “twindemic” – a bad flu season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year, Walensky said, “it’s doubly important this year to build up community immunity.”
Sara Yumeen, M.D., is a dermatology resident at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
