Hey, it's Flora Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.

The superflu is here, and it's wreaking havoc across the nation.

Health officials confirm a new strain of the flu is spreading.

It's very contagious and it lasts longer.

Here in the United States, the number of children hospitalized for the flu hitting the highest weekly rate in more than 15 years.

That's not good.

No, it is not good.

The so-called super flu has sickened more than 19 million people in the U.S. so far this season.

And the flu shot hasn't offered that much protection.

So what is going on with this super flu storm? Here to cough up some

answers is Dr. Jennifer Dushan, pediatric infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Welcome, Jen. Hi. Thank you for having me. Let's talk branding. Is it a super flu? Does that actually

mean anything? So that is a little bit

sensational. Certainly, we've seen a lot of cases of flu and people are sick with it. But

in terms of that terminology, we can kind of break it down into case numbers and virulence. So is it a super flu in terms of

virulence? So is it causing people to have more severe disease? The jury's still kind of out on that.

In terms of case numbers, absolutely. We're seeing a lot more cases of the flu this year.

You know, I know people who got vaccinated for flu still got really sick. Did the vaccine

missed the mark? What happened there? Yeah, so that's really interesting. And that's really

one of the reasons why I love my profession, because, you know, there are always surprises.

So the flu vaccine is made in advance of the flu season, using a combination of microbiologic and global surveillance data, as well as some modeling.

Last year's strains are sort of modeled to see how they're going to change,

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