This year's influenza season — which struck the Chattanooga, Tenn., region early and hard — is evident in its toll on the healthcare system, according to an article on the Times Free Press website.

Nationwide, hospitalization rates for the flu are the highest since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began collecting such data in 2003.

"We were much busier and stressed dealing with a lot of the secondary infections of the influenza," Dr. Mark Anderson, an infectious disease specialist at CHI Memorial, said in the article. "It makes people more likely to have heart attacks, to get bacterial pneumonia, and a lot of other complications, so it led to an increase in hospital admissions."

Erlanger Health System reported almost 1,500 cases of influenza-like illness, or acute respiratory infections, to the health department between Oct. 1 and March 17 this year, compared to about 1,050 during this time last season. The largest number of cases seen in one week was 226 in early February.

Read the article.