ATLANTA — Health officials are renewing their push for Americans to get swine-flu vaccinations after a recent uptick in hospital cases in Georgia.
No other state has had such an increase in hospitalizations, and overall illnesses and deaths from the H1N1 virus have been down for months.
But in the past two weeks, 70 to 80 people in Georgia have been hospitalized with swine flu — the most since September, according to the Georgia Department of Community Health. Most were unvaccinated adults, and many had pre-existing conditions that made them more susceptible to swine flu, federal health officials said Monday.
Georgia has one of the lower vaccination rates for swine flu in the country, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, a flu expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although she declined to elaborate.
Swine flu was first identified last April and hit the country in two waves — a smaller spring wave and then a larger fall wave. Flu activity has been declining since November, and health officials have had to push harder and harder to get people interested in getting some of the tens of millions of unused doses of vaccine.
“Many Americans are still vulnerable because they haven’t gotten vaccinated yet,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin.
About 86 million Americans have been vaccinated in a campaign that began in October.
