Wisconsin Hospitals Seeing Huge Uptick in Flu Cases

Monday, December 5th, 2022 -- 1:00 PM

(By Jenny Peek, Wisconsin Public Radio) Hospital and health care officials in Wisconsin expected to see a swell in respiratory illnesses after the Thanksgiving holiday. But a recent explosion of influenza cases have taken many by surprise.

According to Jenny Peek with Wisconsin Public Radio, Dr. Jeff Pothof is UW Health's chief quality officer and an emergency medicine physician. He said it's not unusual for influenza to show up around Thanksgiving, but cases this year have come on "really strong."

"We had premonition that the influenza season was going to be bad this year. We had looked at what happened in Australia, which is typically a marker, they're the canary in the coal mine for us in the United States … (and) they had a pretty bad year," he said. "But the speed by which it hit us here in Wisconsin, I think was a bit surprising to a lot of us in health care."

Pothof said in the last week of October, UW Health diagnosed a little more than 100 cases of influenza. By mid-November, that number rose to the 200s. As of last week, UW Health counted more than 400 cases of the flu.

To put those numbers in context, the worst flu season Wisconsin has seen in the last five years was the 2019-20 season. That influenza season peaked in February, Pothof said, at 300 cases for UW Health.

"So to be sitting at 400 cases, you know, the first week in December, that's not great. That means we're going to have a pretty robust influenza season, at least for the next several weeks here in Wisconsin," he said. Aspirus, Inc. is seeing a similar pattern in the central part of the state.

In a statement Thursday, the health care system , with 13 hospitals and 75 clinics across Wisconsin, said 70 percent of patients seeking care at walk-in clinics were experiencing respiratory symptoms.

Jeff Wicklander, senior vice president for Aspirus, said that's leading to staffing issues as hospitals and clinics hit capacity.

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