Flu killed 80,000 Last Winter in US - Report

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An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter, the disease's highest death toll in at least four decades.

The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.

Flu experts knew it was a very bad season, but at least one found the size of the estimate surprising.

"That's huge," said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice the figure previously seen by health officials as representing a bad year, he said.

In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to 56,000, according to the CDC.

Last fall and winter, the U.S. went through one of the most severe flu seasons in recent memory. It was driven by a kind of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths, particularly among young children and the elderly.

The season peaked in early February and it was mostly over by the end of March.

Making a bad year worse, the flu vaccine didn't work very well. Experts nevertheless say vaccination is still worth it because it makes illnesses less severe and saves lives.

CDC officials do not have exact counts of how many people die from flu each year. Flu is so common that not all flu cases are reported, and flu is not always listed on death certificates. So the CDC uses statistical models, which are periodically revised, to make estimates.