A mild US flu season is waning, but is it really over?

NEW YORK (AP) — This winter's mild flu season has faded to a trickle of cases in much of the U.S., but health officials aren't ready to call it over.

Since the beginning of the year, positive flu test results and doctor's office visits for flu-like illness are down. But second waves of influenza are not unusual, and some experts said it’s possible a late winter or spring surge could be coming.

“The question we’re asking ourselves now is: ‘Is this it, or is there more to come?’” said Lynnette Brammer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

COVID-19 cases have been falling, leading to a decline in mask wearing and behaviors that may have been keeping flu down this winter. As people are less cautious, flu or other respiratory viruses can surge, Brammer said.

Indeed, some indicators of flu activity have inched up the last couple of weeks: a count of flu-related hospitalizations and the percent of specimens from patients with respiratory illnesses that test positive for flu.

Limited data on who is testing positive for flu suggest about two-thirds are kids and young adults. Kids have driven flu's spread in past years, so "it's quite possible we could see continued increases,” Brammer said.

Dr. Angela Branche, a University of Rochester infectious diseases specialist, called the flu season unusual.

“I don’t have any (flu) cases in my practice this week,” she said recently. Normally, doctors in Rochester would be diagnosing 50 to 100 flu cases a day around this time of year.

It seems like the current flu season is “easing to the finish line,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious diseases expert. But viruses can be unpredictable.

“As the flu-ologists like to say, 'if you've seen one flu...