Flu Hits County Residents at Feverish Pace : Health: Worst outbreak in up to a decade seems to be striking young people particularly hard, doctors say.

The worst outbreak of flu in eight to 10 years is cutting a wide path through Los Angeles County, felling schoolchildren and workers in droves and filling emergency rooms with seriously ill people, doctors and public health officials said Friday.

“We’re seeing tons of flu,” said Dr. Paul Karis, head of the emergency department at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “It’s a major epidemic in our community.”

“People are not just coming in with coughs or headache or sore throat,” he said. “I have one girl who’s five months pregnant and is really dehydrated. I’m back here giving her her third liter of IV fluid.”

Physicians said young people seem to be particularly hard hit this year. Dr. Shirley Fannin, head of communicable disease control for the county health department, said some public schools reported up to 30% absenteeism before the Christmas break. She added that an outbreak has sickened more than 60 youths at a county probation camp in the San Gabriel Mountains.

“This is a heavy year, and the heaviest that we’ve probably had in eight to 10 years,” she said.

Fannin said two strains of flu have been isolated locally: influenza A Texas and influenza A Johannesburg, both of which are covered by this year’s vaccines. Neither strain is more virulent than other types of flu, she said, but more people have come down with these strains this year.

The first confirmed case of flu in the area was identified during Thanksgiving week, about two or three weeks earlier than usual. The early start means this year’s flu season probably will last longer than normal, Fannin said.

Dr. Bill Weinstein, head of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Panorama City, said the hospital added two doctors on the night shift to handle an “overwhelming” number of flu victims.

“We’re seeing a lot of coughs, a lot of fever, a lot of achiness,” he said. “They’re miserable. They’re missing work. . . . We had two people in the hospital; one almost died.”

He said a Kaiser laboratory is under contract to the county to confirm cases of suspected flu, and that the number of confirmed cases is up sharply this year over last.

While the lab detected only three definite cases in November and December 1994, it found 46 cases for the same period this year, Weinstein said.

According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, 44 states reported laboratory-confirmed flu for the week ending Dec. 16. Twenty-nine states reported regional or widespread outbreaks, compared to 21 the week before, the CDC said.

During most flu seasons, about 10% to 20% of the U.S. population is infected with flu. About 1% of those infected require hospitalization, and about 20,000 Americans die of flu or its complications each year.