It’s flu season and, according to recent reports, Arizona is leading the nation in confirmed cases of the illness.

The Centers for Disease Control recently released their latest FluView report which shows that, while flu activity is generally on the decrease worldwide, it remains at an elevated level in the United States.

What’s more, Arizona is leading the nation in flu diagnosis, a trend that seems to be holding true here in Fountain Hills, depending on who you talk to.

Dr. Neha Maheshwari with the local Primary Care Walk-In Medical Clinic said that her office is seeing more flu cases than usual. It got so bad, in fact, that local pharmacies were completely sold out of Tamiflu for a day or two.

Dr. Maheshwari said that, in several cases, flu-like symptoms were appearing while patients were showing negative test results. In those instances, she said it is possible that a different strand is simply making its way through the town.

As for the clinics patients, Maheshwari said that while flu cases are coming in across the age spectrum, the illness affecting the upper respiratory system has been most prominent in older patients.

That seems to be the case at local schools, too.

While Fountain Hills Charter School is not reporting an influx in students or teachers with the flu, McDowell Mountain Elementary School site nurse Rita Luman said that her school is not noticing more cases of the flu than normal, either. Luman said students at McDowell Mountain are more likely to come in with an intestinal flu at the moment but, again, nothing is uncommon in comparison to years past.

Fountain Hills High School, though, is reporting an uptick in students with fevers and strep throat, though teachers don’t seem to be calling in sick with symptoms of their own.

Finally, according to Fountain Hills Administrative Services Director David Trimble, it doesn’t look like the flu has become an issue for the Town, either.

“I can’t really get into specifics, but we haven’t seen an unusual number of absentees,” Trimble said.

“Nothing that would affect our operations.”