An Odd Time for Influenza A

This caught my attention today. I’m hoping it’s nothing, but it’s worth looking into more closely.

This is influenza A in wastewater at two sites that are monitored in the Amarillo, Texas area. I’ve expanded it to include the entire influenza season. What grabbed me was the sharp climb at the River Road facility (the red line).

It also might help to put that in context of influenza A across all monitored sites in the US over the same time period.

I also pulled up Biobot Analytics for their influenza A data. What is interesting is that the southern region of the US is the only place that influenza A is increasing.

From FluView, we can see a clear decline in influenza A across the US in public health labs.

This is the data from clinical labs from across the US, showing the same pattern.

This view is of the clinical lab data in Texas alone, which should make it clear that it’s been declining there overall as well, even more steeply than in the US overall.

I knew that the Texas panhandle was a major cattle area in the country, so my thinking went to H5N1, although we have only seen it in dairy cattle, not beef. This article paints a picture of the beef industry in that area.

I also wonder what the recent wildfires did as far as mixing of herds and some of the decisions by ranchers as they faced losing their livelihoods.

Another interesting view is influenza A from Amarillo Public Health over the past four years. I couldn’t find any data for Moore County where the wastewater treatment plant in question is, but I would be surprised if these trends were very different there, which also suggests that perhaps that the anomaly could be from cattle.

H5N1 is a strain of influenza A. It’s impossible to know at this time if this is what is driving this increase, but vigilance is warranted. Hopefully this is simply all a coincidence or just a statistical anomaly. I watch for early signals to monitor.