NEW ULM — Brown County Public Health Director Jaimee Brand told Brown County commissioners Tuesday that there is quite a bit of winter flu activity across the state.

She admitted there is not as much public health data available now from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) as there was during the COVID-19 epidemic.

“Some of our disease prevention and control data is not as robust as we had in the past because there have been a lot of state level transitions. They have had to cut quite a few disease prevention and control staff due to federal government funding cuts,” Brand said. “I can tell you influenza is still trending high. As of Jan. 15, we’ve had 48 statewide adult flu deaths. None of them were pediatric (infants, children, adolescents and youth adult) deaths.”

Brand said positive flu test rates have been high, about 32% the last two weeks of December and first week of January.

Last Thursday, the MDH reported 23.8% positive influenza lab tests, 3,583 hospitalizations, 179 school outbreaks, and 69 long-term care outbreaks.

“We’re seeing the flu positively rate come down. I’m not sure yet if we’ve seen the peak. It’s still too early to tell. If the rate continues to come down the next two weeks, we’ll say it was the peak,” Brand said.

She said it’s not too late to get flu vaccines, which are available at Brown County Public Health plus pharmacies and health care centers.

Brand said it’s too early to tell how effective flu vaccines are this year.

“This is not the worst flu season we’ve seen the last three years. Two years ago, influenza activity was higher. We usually get the flu vaccine effectiveness rates in late February,” she said.

Brand said statewide COVID activity levels are low but some wastewater tests show COVID levels trending up, so case levels may trend up in the next two weeks or so.

“We still want people to get vaccinated (for COVID), but the decision should be made with a primary care physician,” she said. “We don’t have COVID vaccine at public health. We refer people to their healthcare provider or pharmacy.”

Brand said some states have a higher number of measles cases, but Minnesota does not have many now.

She said a few free radon test kits remain available at the Brown County Public Health Office, 1117 Center St. and at city offices in Sleepy Eye, Springfield and Comfrey City Hall.