In the month of Dec. 2014, Chuck Hartman, senior, missed eight days of school. Two of those days, he was being hospitalized for influenza, commonly known as the flu.

“I have this stomach [condition] called GERD – gastroesophageal reflux disease. Normally it’s not a problem, but when I get the flu, it makes [GERD] worse, so I can’t eat food,” Hartman said. “The flu this year, the strain I got, makes [people infected with that strain] not be able to take in nutrients. So you just starve.”

Hartman was just one of 1,283 hospitalized flu cases in Minn. as of Jan. 15.

The most noticeable characteristic of the flu season this year was when it reached its maximum number of cases, which was much earlier than past seasons, according to reports from hospitals, clinics, and schools to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). Though flu is around all year long, it typically does not peak until Jan.

This flu season’s early onset has caught the entire nation off guard, especially schools.

“If we look at symptoms of fever over 100 [degrees Fahrenheit], cough, sore throat, and extreme body aches, we have definitely seen an uptick in the number of kids who have those symptoms,” said Ms. Bobbi Pointer, school nurse.

According to state law, if five percent of a school’s student body, or three or more students in an elementary classroom, are absent due to influenza-like illness, the school must report an outbreak.

“We have met that in a number of [elementary school] classrooms in this district already,” Pointer said.

There were 622 school flu outbreaks in the state of Minn. reported at the end of 2014, with an all-time high reached in Dec. at more than three hundred outbreaks in one week, according to MDH.

Pointer works with the MDH on a program called Flu Surveillance.

“Basically, people all over the state of Minnesota alert the Health Department when we get to a certain level of potential flu cases. That level is five percent of our student body, and that’s only about 80 to 100 students,” Pointer said. “[HHS hasn’t] reached that threshold yet; we might [soon] – who knows.”

During the month of school Dec. 2014, there were a collective 715.22 days of absence due to illness at HHS –  266,778 minutes of school missed. In the same period the year before, there were only 554.28 days of absence.

From Dec. 1 through Dec. 16, over the course of 12 school days, there were a collective 508.9 days of school missed at HHS. In the same period last year, there were only 410.29. That is a 19.3 percent increase, thanks in part to the early onset of the flu season.

One of the reasons so many students get sick may be due to the nature of influenza’s spread.

“It’s incredibly contagious. That’s why we see so much of it. It’s respiratory, so if you sneeze, if you cough, if you do that into your sleeve or into your hand, and then you touch that doorknob, or you walk into the cafeteria, and you touch a door in your classroom, or you share a pencil with somebody – it is contagious,” Pointer said.

Hartman expressed similar sentiments, hoping he was not sick while in school.

“Whenever you’re in the bathroom, people don’t wash their hands,” Hartman said. “And hand sanitizer, that’s not good for you. You’re killing the good bacteria on your hands, so you’re making all the bacteria on your hands immune to bacteria-killing antibodies.”

Hartman weighed 215 pounds before he had the flu. By the time his symptoms went away, he weighed 185 – a 30-pound loss.

“I would hope that students who have any of [the flu] symptoms, and especially in combination, stay home,” Pointer said. “And really you are contagious until you no longer have a fever.”

MDH recommends that the best way to avoid getting the flu is to get either the nasal spray vaccine or the quadrivalent flu shot, which vaccinates for four strains of influenza. However, some years, the strain that emerges is not among those in the vaccine. It is believed that the strain this year has mutated to protect itself against the vaccination.

“I don’t think being in school while sick is good,” Hartman said. “There’s 30, 32 people [in each classroom], and if someone coughs, we all inhale it.”