California officials are issuing warnings about a new flu strain that is increasing flu-related cases and hospitalizations statewide, with public health experts across the nation echoing the alerts.

A newly emerged influenza A strain, H3N2 subclade K, is already wreaking havoc globally and is affecting hospitals and clinics in California, the state’s Department of Public Health announced Tuesday. The agency described the seasonal flu activity as “elevated” in the state; data show that flu test positivity rates, which measure the percentage of patients who come in with flu symptoms and actually test positive for influenza, have been rising in recent weeks. However, they are still relatively low compared to last year’s flu season.

“Flu started to rise, in earnest, by mid-December and rates are still up,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional physician chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente. “We are hoping to see some plateauing in the next few weeks, but there’s some delay in data due to recent holidays, so it will become clearer in the next week or so.”

Hudson said most flu-related cases are being treated without the need for hospital admittance, “but those who are older or at higher risk for complications from the flu are the ones we’re mostly seeing admitted.”

According to data from the public health agency, there’s a high rate of positive flu cases in Central California and the Bay Area and a moderate rate around Sacramento and Southern California. In the northern part of the state where it’s more rural, the rate of flu cases is currently low, according to the agency’s website.

In Los Angeles County, recent data from the health department show that between the end of last year and the start of 2026, there were 162 flu-related hospitalizations and an additional 18 cases in which patients were admitted for intensive care.

Nationally, this flu season has been far worse than in California. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this flu season has led to the highest number of cases in the U.S. in more than 30 years. The agency estimates that there have been at least 15 million infections in the U.S., with 180,000 hospitalizations and 7,400 deaths, since late fall. At least two of those who died have been children, said Yvonne Maldonado, the Taube professor of global health and infectious disease at Stanford Medicine, in a news release. The state’s Department of Public Health confirmed that those pediatric flu-associated deaths occurred in California.

Last year, infectious disease experts predicted this flu season would be particularly bad for high-risk groups, specifically children, due to a decline in flu vaccination rates and a “souped-up mutant” flu strain, Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco, told The Times.

Last year’s flu season was particularly bad, “but little did we know what was in store for us this year,” said Dr. Neha Nanda, medical director of antimicrobial stewardship with Keck Medicine of USC. Nanda said she is seeing an early upward trend in positive influenza cases this season compared with previous years, though it isn’t quite on par with last year, or from the years preceding COVID — at least in California.

Dr. Sam Torbati, co-chair and medical director of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s emergency department, said that around the second week of December he saw a lot of patients coming into his department with flu-related illnesses, part of a surge in hospitalizations that was seen throughout the county.

He said he doesn’t recall “seeing this many patients becoming this ill.”

“It’s very early in the flu season and may get much worse,” Torbati said.

Experts believe the strain has mutated to “more likely evade” immunity from the current vaccine. That’s because the strain emerged toward the end of the summer, long after health officials had already determined the formula for the flu vaccine.

“Current seasonal flu vaccines remain effective at reducing severe illness and hospitalization, including the currently circulating viruses,” said Dr. Erica Pan, state public health officer.

Even though the flu shot might not keep you from succumbing to the illness, “it lessens your odds of having a severe case, keeps you out of the hospital and shortens the duration of the illness,” said Dr. Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth, in a report by the Assn. of American Medical Colleges.

Officials are urging the public, especially those at higher risk for severe flu complications such as the very young and older populations, to get vaccinated or take immediate antiviral treatment, such as Tamiflu.

The flu can be very serious with symptoms — fatigue, fever, cough and body aches — that feel like you got “hit by a Mack truck,” Hudson said.

For children and other high-risk individuals, the symptoms can be more severe.

“Children can develop dehydration [or] pneumonia, and more severe cases of flu in kids can lead to inflammation of the brain and heart,” Hudson said.

The problem has not been limited to the U.S. The influenza A strain, H3N2 subclade K, has caused severe flu seasons in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe and Asia.

As global officials confirm that 2025 was Earth’s third-hottest year on record, a new poll shows Americans are sharply divided over the role of science in the United States.

A report published Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans want the U.S. to be a world leader in science, but Republicans and Democrats disagree on whether it is.

About two-thirds of Democrats, 65%, fear the U.S. is losing ground to other countries when it comes to scientific achievement — a 28-point increase since 2023, the poll found. Republicans have moved in the opposite direction, with far fewer saying the U.S. is losing ground than in the past, 32%, a 12-point decrease in that same time frame.

The divide mirrors “other partisan differences in attitudes around science we have been tracking for years,” the Pew report says. “In particular, partisan differences in trust in scientists and the value of science for society are far wider than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans have become less confident in scientists and less likely to say science has had a mostly positive effect on society, while Democratic views are largely unchanged.”

The report notes that the Trump administration has reshaped federal science policy, including eliminating research grants, cutting science and health workforces, and shifting priorities away from climate change research. Last month, the administration dismantled one of the world’s leading climate and weather research institutions, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Some 90% of Democrats say they have a least a fair amount of confidence in scientists, but only 65% of Republicans said the same, according to the poll, which surveyed 5,111 U.S. adults in October. The gap in confidence between both parties on this point has been broadly similar in every survey since 2021.

Experts said the findings are not particularly surprising.

“It’s part of a larger trend toward the politicization of science,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, citing issues such as vaccines and climate change. He said concerns about “falling behind” may be warranted as “the U.S. is very much doubling down on being a ‘petro state’ — exporting our oil and gas — whereas other parts of the world, particularly China, are doubling down on exporting clean energy technologies like wind, solar and batteries.”

The report lands as the world continues to head in the wrong direction when it comes to global warming.

On Wednesday, eight international groups released data confirming that 2025 was Earth’s third-hottest year on record — nearly tied with 2023 and just behind 2024, the warmest year on record. Among the groups are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the Japanese Meteorological Agency and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, according to Copernicus.

Last year’s global average temperature was about 2.65 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the baseline against which global warming is measured. That means it was just shy of the 2.7 degree limit (1.5 degrees Celsius) established under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, an internationally recognized tipping point for the worst effects of climate change.

“The news is not encouraging, and the urgency of climate action has never been more important,” Mauro Facchini, head of Earth observation at the Directorate General for Defence Industry and Space at the European Commission, told reporters this week.

Yet Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris agreement on his first day back in office, a move he also made during his first term as president. Earlier this month, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from 66 other international organizations and treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, from which the Paris agreement stems.

The world is now on track to breach the Paris agreement’s limit for long-term global warming before the end of the decade — several years earlier than previously predicted, according to Hausfather, who also helped produce Berkeley Earth’s global temperature report released this week. He said it is likely that 2026 will fall “somewhere between the second and fourth warmest” years on record.

“The new data is the latest unequivocal evidence that our climate is in crisis,” said Carlos Martinez, a senior climate scientists with the Union of Concerned Scientists. But “the Trump administration is not simply refusing to face the reality of climate change we are experiencing, it is actively lying about science and undermining our nation’s federal scientific resources.”

Last year wasn’t only warm globally. The contiguous U.S. experienced the fourth warmest year in its 131-year record, according to NOAA’s assessment. Utah and Nevada recorded their warmest years on record at 4.3 degrees and 3.7 degrees above their 20th-century averages, respectively. California tied for its fourth-warmest year on record.

NOAA previously tracked weather and climate disasters where damages exceed $1 billion, but the Trump administration shut down that database last year. The administration also fired hundreds of scientists working to prepare the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment and removed the website that housed previous assessments.

Officials with multiple international groups this week stressed that global cooperation is key as warmer global temperatures worsen the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, wildfires and floods.

“Collaborative and scientifically rigorous global data collection is more important than ever before because we need to ensure that Earth information is authoritative, accessible and actionable for all,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization.

“Data and observations are essential to our efforts to confront climate change and air quality challenges, and these challenges don’t know borders,” said Florian Pappenberger, director general of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. However, he noted that NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs has committed to not deleting any data, “which is a welcome thing.”

“Data don’t lie,” he said. “All we need to do is measure them.”