New York City’s emergency rooms are straining under what public health officials are calling the worst flu surge in a decade. During the week ending December 20, nearly 10,000 patients flooded city emergency departments complaining of flu-like symptoms—more than during any comparable week in the past ten years. At Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Manhasset, daily emergency room visits have jumped from 250 to nearly 290, with the dominant H3N2 strain showing mutations that help it evade immune defenses. Schools have shuttered, including Brooklyn’s Poly Prep Country Day School, where roughly a third of students fell ill within days. And public health experts warn the worst is yet to come.
Against this backdrop, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a remarkable window into the microscopic battle occurring in our bodies millions of times over this holiday season. Researchers from Switzerland and Japan have, for the first time, captured live, high-resolution video of influenza viruses entering living human cells—revealing a process far more dynamic and surprising than scientists previously understood.
“The infection of our body cells is like a dance between virus and cell,” says Yohei Yamauchi, Professor of Molecular Medicine, ETH Zurich…