Health Update: Health Update: Healthy teens are dying from the flu. Families urge vaccination. – What Experts Say– What Experts Say.
Flu season is coming back to the US this year. Here’s what we know.
After a two-year hiatus, health experts say the flu may be back this season. Here’s why the U.S. could see an uptick in flu cases.
USA TODAY, USA TODAY
Destiny Mojica always had a smile on her face. She loved baking, had a soft spot for animals and could often be found perfecting her makeup and nails. Though she could be shy at first, she enjoyed helping others and her radiant personality shined once you got to know her.
Destiny was a “healthy, loving and active 16 year old,” her aunt Yesenia Mojica-Santillan told USA TODAY.
When Destiny developed a cough and congestion in December 2024, her family thought little of it. She was a typical teenager and colds in the winter were hardly uncommon.
But after a few weeks, more symptoms developed − she felt weak, lightheaded and her face was swelling. It was the flu, and it eventually took Destiny’s life months later in May 2025.
Now, her family and other parents who lost healthy kids to the flu are sharing their stories in the hopes of warning others as the flu surges this season. The current strain of the flu has resulted in record-high hospitalizations and thousands of deaths, including at least 32 pediatric deaths so far. Last year, pediatric deaths reached nearly 300.
“The flu is not ‘just the flu.’ It is a serious and sometimes deadly virus,” Mojica-Santillan said. “I watched my niece suffer from complications of the flu − something so many people dismiss or underestimate.”
‘Our family will never be the same’
Before her niece got sick, Mojica-Santillan said she didn’t realize how fast flu complications can develop or how unpredictable it can be, recounting how a trip to the emergency room with Destiny for feeling faint sparked a months-long battle with the virus.
“Next thing we knew she was being transported to the local children’s hospital because her heart was beginning to fail,” Mojica-Santillan said.
At the children’s hospital, she went into cardiac arrest. It took 45 minutes to get her heartbeat back.
For the next five months, Mojica-Santillan watched as her niece dealt with multiple organ failure, faced numerous infections, was repeatedly intubated and placed on a heart and lung bypass machine to keep her alive.
“Even I, a registered nurse, had not seen anyone get this sick from the flu,” Mojica-Santillan said.
In March, a heart and a kidney transplant gave Destiny’s family new hope at recovery.
“Hope that she would heal, that she would grow up, laugh, and dream the way every teenager deserves to,” Mojica-Santillan said.
But the opposite happened. A severe lung infection hit next that required a transplant she was ineligible for due to her fragile condition.
“In May we were told there was nothing more that could be done. On May 18, we said goodbye to Destiny, surrounded by love,” Mojica-Santillan said. “Our family will never be the same.”
From headache to vomiting blood to cardiac arrest
Blake Crane was another healthy and active 16 year old when flu complications lead to his death in 2020.
He was passionate about baseball and played on teams through high school and during the summers. He also loved music, played trumpet in the school band and could often be found with a book (or two) in hand.
“I only thought elderly people died of the flu. That was my understanding. I knew the flu killed people, but I thought it was weak elderly people,” Blake’s mom Becky Crane told USA TODAY, adding she never thought it could happen to a healthy kid like her son.
Blake’s family had a weekend snowboard trip planned when he came home from school on a Friday complaining of a headache. The next afternoon, he woke up during the family’s road trip with a severe sore throat. After a negative strep test at an out-of-town emergency room, the family was instructed to take him home and keep him resting and hydrated.
After a night of NyQuil and Gatorade in a motel, the family headed home, keeping a watchful eye on the sick and sleeping teen.
Once home on Sunday, the vomiting began − and it was red.
“We couldn’t tell at first if it was red because of NyQuil or red because of blood. When we thought it was blood, we knew that that was not normal,” Crane said.
They rushed him to the ER, where they struggled to get his oximeter to register on his finger while his lips turned blue.
“That’s when the frenzy began,” she said, adding tests came back showing his lungs were filled with blood and he was already in multi-system organ failure.
He died at 2 a.m. of cardiac arrest, not even four days after his first symptoms began.
“At one point I heard influenza B mentioned, and I literally thought that must be some weird strain, because it wasn’t aligning with my understanding of why we were here and why my son was so sick,” she said, but confirmed it was just a normal strain.
The importance of the flu vaccine
The years they died, both Destiny and Blake missed their flu vaccine.
Blake, who always got his annual shot, had started driving, his mom explained, so it was harder to align schedules.
“Getting him to the doctor’s office after school one day was not easy,” Crane said. “We just didn’t do it because it wasn’t convenient.”
Now she recalls the moment the vaccine’s importance was seared into her mind. As the doctors came to tell her Blake was likely not going to make it, they asked if he had been vaccinated.
“I had to say no, and I directly had to say, ‘Would he be OK if he had?’ And she said, ‘There’s a likelihood that he would be,'” Crane recounted, adding it challenged her previous understanding that the shot was “hit or miss” since people can still catch the virus after vaccination.
“She taught me right then that that the flu vaccination helps (protect against) severe symptoms that we were dealing with,” she said. “Sometimes people still do get it, but it would have been worse had they not been vaccinated.”
Destiny was ineligible for the shot because she was already having symptoms during her annual check-up when she typically got her vaccines.
Despite being a nurse who encouraged her patients to get the flu shot, Mojica-Santillan admitted there were times she questioned it herself.
“After experiencing mild side effects, I thought about the inconvenience instead of the bigger picture,” Mojica-Santillan said. “That changed forever when my family lived through the unthinkable… No sore arm, no body aches, no temporary discomfort could ever compare to what she endured, or the pain our family now carries every single day.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was revising its childhood immunization schedule to recommend four fewer vaccines, including for flu. It will now be based on shared decision-making between parents and health care providers − not an outright recommendation − a move criticized by public health experts.
In an effort to raise more awareness, Crane and Mojica-Santillan are sharing their loved ones’ stories.
Crane has also turned her grief into advocacy, organizing flu clinics and free flu shots for her community.
“I wanted to make it easier for families, knowing that what happened to (Blake’s) last vaccination was simply because it was not convenient,” she said.
With about 200 childhood flu deaths in the U.S. each year, they are considered rare, but Crane warns they come on fast − and if you wait until there are serious side effects, it may be too late.
“Why risk it?” she said. “Remember my story.”