2017–2018 United States flu season

[6] The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began counting the 2017–2018 "flu season" as October 2017, and by early February 2018, the epidemic was still widespread and increasing overall.

[7] On 10 February 2018, Bloomberg reported that influenza in the United States was killing up to 4,000 Americans a week, likely to far outstrip the rate of deaths in the 2009–2010 pandemic season.

Anne Schuchat, then-acting director of the CDC, said that the main type of the flu that year had not "changed enough from previous seasons to be considered a novel strain.

[6] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during the 2017–2018 season the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) was at or above the epidemic threshold for 16 consecutive weeks.

This estimation of three times the reported pediatric deaths was arrived at based on the observation that about two-thirds of children who died with a suspected viral background were not tested for influenza.

Of those 163 deaths, 36 had died during the first week of February; the same article also noted that the peak of the flu season has apparently passed as reports of new cases have declined.

[21] On 12 February 2018, Delaware announced that it had seen six deaths and 995 confirmed flu cases in seven days, making it the state's highest weekly total on record.

Additionally, Klobuchar continued to push the US Food and Drug Administration to fix the national IV bag and saline shortage, for adversely affecting the treatment of flu symptoms.

[25] In January 2018, The Atlantic also noted that the severity of the flu season in the United States may have been increased by a shortage of IV bags in hospitals.