The Region - News from Dec. 16, 1986

Los Angeles County’s first case of influenza this season has been identified in a 9-year-old East Los Angeles boy, the county Department of Health Services reported. That it took this long for the first laboratory-proven case to appear may indicate that Los Angeles will have a mild flu season this year, the department’s Dr. Steve Waterman said. Although tests have not yet determined which type of flu virus is in the community, Dr. Shirley Fannin, department deputy director, said she believes that it is a variant of the Asian flu virus, identified last spring in Taiwan, whose principal target is people under age 35.