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People close to infants urged to get flu shot

1,298 views · Published 12 January 2015 · 2:48 · Indexed 21 September 2026

Channel: LOCAL 12 · 2015 · News & Politics

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CINCINNATI (Sydney Benter) -- The flu has claimed the lives of 15 children across the country including two here in the Tri-State. 

A baby who was younger than 6-months-old from Hamilton County is one of the victims. It's scary for mothers any time their infant is sick, so hearing about that infant's death is concerning for one mother whose baby daughter just had the virus.

"She had went (sic) down to one diaper a day and maybe two or three ounces of milk a day, and it was just like you could tell it was draining her," said Tyeisha Champion about her infant daughter Ricc'kay. 

Champion suspected it was the flu. She had it, too and so did one of her other daughters. She phoned the doctor when her 5-month-old's temperature spiked.

"She [the emergency room doctor] told me it wouldn't make no sense (sic) to bring her in because it was--the flu was going around basically," said Champion.

The flu certainly is going around. More than 140 people in Cincinnati have already been hospitalized for the flu this season

"Typically when H3N2 is the flavor that predominates there are more hospitalizations. It's typically a somewhat worse year," said Dr. Steven Englender, the director for the Cincinnati Center for Public Health Preparedness.

Infants who are younger than 6 months are too young for the flu vaccine. Doctors say anyone who comes in close contact with infants should be vaccinated, and expectant mothers are no exception.

"Because the baby can't be immunized, the maternal antibodies may help prevent serious illness if the infant is exposed to influenza," said Englender.

It took more than a week for baby Ricc'kay to shake her symptoms. Champion says the ordeal was pretty scary. 

"Both of us having the flu and being sick--I could control my pain and take medication, but I couldn't do the same for her, so it was very hurtful."

Champion said she's never gotten the flu shot. She said she used to have her children vaccinated but that they'd get sick anyway so she doesn't any longer. Forty percent of Americans have had this season's vaccination, but vaccines designed early in the year are in many ways an educated guess about threats from the flu season ahead.

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