Mower County’s flu season has been pretty average to this point, but there is some reason to be concerned, according to Tuesday morning’s report by Lisa Kocer, county Health and Human Services director, to the Mower County Board of Commissioners.

“For us right now, it’s normal,” she said. “We haven’t hit peak yet; usually, that’s in February and early March. So we’re keeping an eye on it and hope to ride it out.”

Board Chairman Jerry Reinartz said he’d not heard of problems at the schools, yet.

Austin Public Schools reported to the Herald on Tuesday that 3.51 percent of the approximate 5,000 students were out with some type of illness on Tuesday. Officials say concerns are raised with parents when absences reach five percent or more.

Kocer said her department has been in communication with the local hospital and it’s busy but not to the point where the county would need to launch a campaign similar to what was needed when H1N1 struck.

“During H1N1 we had a lot of people coming down sick and employers saying in order to come back you have to have a slip from the doctor,” Kocer said.

So, the county sent out the message to not do that.

“You don’t want to clog up the ER and pre-care with that,” Kocer said.

The most recent weekly influenza and respiratory illness activity report from the Minnesota Health Department says as of the week ending Jan. 13, the state has seen 2,332 hospitalizations overall. The pace of hospitalizations slowed to 420 for that week, down from 652 the week before.

During the 2016-17 flu season, there were 3,738 hospitalizations compared to 1,541 in 2015-16.

Since the start of this flu season, one pediatric influenza related death has been reported.

“This is a strain of flu that is hitting the really young and folks over 65 with chronic health conditions harder,” Kocer said.

The vaccine is not a good match for this year’s strain of flu, she said.

“When the flu hits the world, it kind of starts over in China, in the far east,” she said. “And in Australia, it really hit hard and they thought that vaccine didn’t really match. We’re using the same vaccine.”

Still, a little protection is better than none, she said, advising people to be vaccinated.

Commissioner Mike Ankeny asked whether there was any truth to what is commonly said about more people getting sick when the weather shifts from cold to warm to cold.

“That’s not true, that’s kind of an old wives (tale),” Kocer said.

“I think people think that oh, the bugs are going to come out of hibernation,” she said referring to viruses and the like. “There’s bugs no matter what.”