Dr. Doug Curran, East Texas Community Clinic Chief Medical Officer, speaks during the Texas Tribune event on rural healthcare at Tyler Junior College. (Raquel Villatoro/Tyler Morning Telegraph File)

More and more East Texans are getting sick with the flu, and data shows the rates are increasing.

Emergency department visits for treatment of the flu are very high and have been increasing over the last week in Smith, Van Zandt, Cherokee, Wood, Gregg, Rusk, Upshur, Harrison, Anderson, Henderson and Panola counties, according to data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control.

Dr. Valerie Smith, Smith County health authority, said there has been a “tremendous increase” in ER visits because of the flu in Texas Public Health Region 4, which includes Smith and surrounding counties. She said the numbers for the week of Feb. 1 alone were higher than the peak for the 2023-2024 respiratory season.

According to the DSHS Respiratory Virus Dashboard, 90-plus percent of those respiratory illnesses that are resulting in people going to the ER in the region are from the flu.

Similar high rates are being seen across the country. Since Feb. 14, the amount of acute respiratory illness causing people to seek healthcare is at a high level, according to the CDC, and seasonal flu activity is higher than it has been all season.

Special Health Resources is one of the local entities that has seen an increase of patients coming in and testing positive for the flu over the last three weeks, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anita Scribner, who is based in Longview.

Some of the regional increase can be attributed to less people getting an influenza shot, according to local officials and nationwide data. It’s a trend being seen across the country, data shows.

Locally, when Scribner admits patients into Longview Regional Medical Center, she asks them if they got vaccinated for the flu. Oftentimes, their answer is no.

Nationally, lower rates of vaccinations for the flu are contributing to high rates of the flu, the CDC reported. About 30% of positive tests in the United States are from the flu, with the majority of those cases being flu A.

Since the 2020-21 respiratory season, the amount of flu doses distributed has declined. CDC data for the 2024-25 flu respiratory season shows less doses of flu shots were given out. This season, 146.22 million flu doses were distributed as of the week of Jan. 19-25. In comparison, 193.86 million doses of the flu shot were distributed during the same week in January 2021.

Healthcare providers report that many of the patients getting sick with the flu are unvaccinated. This is an area of concern for providers in East Texas due to the underlying issues many people have in the region.

“We have more patients that are immuno-suppressed, more patients that are elderly, people with chronic lung diseases … As time goes by, compared to 20 years ago, we have a lot more Americans that have metabolic diseases, and those people tend to have more problems with the flu often,” Scribner said.

East Texas clinics and pediatricians are also seeing children impacted due to the flu. For children with underlying health issues, getting the flu can lead to complications or worse.

“A lot of people have started to question vaccines, and as somebody who sees the value in them and has seen people die from vaccine preventable illnesses, that’s kind of heartbreaking for me,” said Kathleen “KT” Helgesen, certified pediatric nurse practitioner at Bethesda Pediatrics. “It’s really easy to refuse a vaccine when you don’t know the consequences of what happens if your child is (on) that the list that we’re protecting from.”

People at risk for complications from the flu are the elderly and those with underlying conditions such as: asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, diabetes, neuromuscular diseases, cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis.

At East Texas Community Clinic — with locations in Athens and Gun Barrel City — patients have been coming in primarily for treatment of the flu. Over 70% of their patients are low income, 46-48% on Medicaid and over 30% are uninsured. Many of their health issues are worsened due to the disparities rural East Texans face.

“We just see a lot more trouble from that particular group because of exposure and living circumstances, and then getting people to understand how valuable vaccines are is always challenging,” said Dr. Doug Curran, Chief Medical Officer at East Texas Community Clinic. “We see that it has gotten a lot worse over the past few years, and at the end of the day, it’s really going to hurt our people.”

As a physician, Curran knows the importance of preventative efforts such as vaccines to maintain public health. He hopes people will get flu, RSV and COVID-19 vaccines to prevent severe illnesses and spread of respiratory viruses.

“They make an enormous difference in our ability to stay healthy and stay well, even if you get a flu experience after a vaccination, your likelihood of having a severe, untoward outcome is just so small,” Curran said.

Healthcare providers emphasize the importance of washing your hands, staying home if sick, wearing a mask to protect others and looking at reliable information about vaccines.

“We also have to acknowledge that there’s a lot of mis- and disinformation about vaccines, flu vaccine included, but vaccines in general that is available online, via mostly social media. I really encourage people to utilize evidence-based sources of information and really look at where that information is coming from,” Smith said.

For information regarding vaccines, visit immunize.org, familydoctor.org or the American Academy of Pediatrics website. In addition, people can check data for Western European countries if they are distrustful of data from the U.S., Hegelsen said.