A company tracking this year’s flu season through its “smart thermometers” that upload body temperatures to its website, says right now Utah is the sickest state in the country.
Kinsa Health says its data accurately sees where flu-like illness is spreading in real time and for the first week of the new year, from Logan to St. George, 5.7 percent of Utahns were sick with the flu.
That is more than 182,000 people.
The Kinsa Insights team said the national illness level was holding steady the first seven days of January at 4.4 percent of the US population.
The company’s numbers indicate Florida is the second sickest state and New Mexico is third.
Spokesperson Kristen Marion said Kinsa’s data is nearly perfectly aligned with the CDC’s influenza data over the past three years, but is available right away and with unprecedented geo-precision.
More than 500,000 households now own Kinsa smartphone-connected oral and ear thermometers.