Flu hospital admissions are likely to keep rising nationwide through at least mid-November, according to CDC forecasts released alongside the agency's latest surveillance report. The same report recorded the first flu-associated death of a child in the 2026-27 season.
The CDC's Week 42 FluView report, covering the week ending October 24, 2026, and published October 30, said its FluSight forecasts predict "a likely increase nationally in both flu hospital admissions" and in the share of emergency department visits linked to flu for the week ending November 14. The forecast range for that week runs from 4,800 to 23,200 new hospital admissions.
The child's death occurred during the week ending October 10 and was associated with an influenza A(H1N1) virus, the CDC said. Hospitals reporting to the CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network logged 6,100 lab-confirmed flu admissions in Week 42, a rate of 1.8 per 100,000 people.
Flu activity is higher than usual for this time of year and rising, according to the CDC. Most states are considered to have low activity, with the exceptions of Hawaii and Louisiana, which are moderate. Most of the viruses reported by public health laboratories have been influenza A(H1N1)pdm09.
The CDC estimates that the season has caused at least 1 million illnesses, 16,000 hospitalizations and 900 deaths so far. During the 2025-26 season, 198 children died of flu.
The CDC's Week 43 FluView, covering the week ending October 31, is the next checkpoint. It will show whether hospital admissions are tracking toward the low or high end of the FluSight range. FluSight is the CDC's flu forecasting program, which combines projections from multiple modeling teams into an ensemble forecast of hospital admissions and emergency department visits several weeks out.
