The rate at which children are being hospitalized for the flu has skyrocketed to 145 percent since the start of the year, leaving doctors concerned.

The number of kids admitted to the hospital for influenza has jumped from 959 on January 4 to 2,348 on February 1, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Doctors have characterized this flu season as one of the worst in recent history.

“Influenza comes around every winter. While there isn't really such a thing as a ‘good’ influenza season — every year we see thousands of deaths and hospitalizations — seasons vary in severity from year to year, and this is a particularly severe season,” Dr. Sean T. O’Leary. chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a statement.

So far this year, 86 children have died from the respiratory illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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“Death is obviously the most severe outcome, but there is a huge spectrum between well and not well,” Dr. Anika Patel, a pediatric critical-care doctor in Washington, D.C., told the Washington Post. “The flu can take a previously healthy kid and land them on a ventilator.”

Pediatric patients accounted for one-third of all flu cases seen in emergency departments for the week ending February 1, the highest percentage among children reported since October 2023, the Post noted.

The cause of the uptick isn’t entirely clear, but the declining rate at which children are being inoculated could be a contributing factor.

Less than half of U.S. children have gotten the flu shot this season, CDC data shows. The vaccination rate among children, aged 6 months to 17 years old, has dropped in recent years, perhaps as hesitancy over vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic became more mainstream. In the same week in 2022, 52 percent of children received the flu vaccine; in 2021, 55 percent were vaccinated and in 2020, 59 percent were vaccinated.

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As Covid-19 surged across the world, conspiracy theories claiming that the vaccine would alter one’s DNA or included an injection of a microchip persisted online. Just six months after the vaccines were approved for public use, in May 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who is now Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, submitted a petition to the department he now leads demanding the authorization for Covid-19 vaccines be revoked.

Now just weeks into Kennedy leading the nation’s health agencies, the FDA canceled its March meeting, where it typically selects the strains to be included in next season’s flu shot.

“The cancellation of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting is alarming. We are in the middle of one of the worst flu seasons in years, and children are being hospitalized at concerning rates,” Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the Post.

The CDC recommends everyone 6 months and older should get a flu shot, noting that while it may not prevent contracting the illness, the vaccine could “make symptoms less severe and reduce flu-related hospitalizations and deaths in people who get vaccinated but still get sick.”

“The best thing a parent can do to protect their family from influenza is to make sure everyone gets vaccinated,” Dr. O’Leary said. “It's not too late for this season because we’re still seeing widespread circulation.”

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