NEW YORK (AP) — The flu has further tightened its grip on the U.S. This season is now as bad as the swine flu epidemic nine years ago.

A government report out Friday shows 1 of every 13 visits to the doctor last week was for fever, cough and other symptoms of the flu. That ties the highest level seen in the U.S. during swine flu in 2009.

And it surpasses every winter flu season since 2003, when the government changed the way it measures flu.

This season started early and has been driven by a nasty type of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths than other more common flu bugs.

But its long-lasting intensity has surprised experts, who are still sorting out why it’s been so bad. Flu usually peaks in February.

Some doctors say this is the worst flu season they’ve seen in decades. Some people are saying that, too.

Veda Albertson, a 70-year-old retiree in Tampa, was sick for three weeks with high fever and fluid in her lungs. She said she hadn’t been this sick from the flu since the 1960s, when she was a young mother who couldn’t get out of bed to go to the crib of her crying baby.

“It was like ‘Wham!’ It was bad. It was awful,” she said of the illness that hit her on Christmas Day.

Heather Jossi, a 40-year-old Denver police officer and avid runner, said her illness last month was the worst flu she’s experienced.

“I don’t remember aches this bad. Not for four days,” said Jossi. “It took me out.”

Last week, 43 states had high patient traffic for the flu, up from 42, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Flu remained widespread in every state except Hawaii and Oregon and hospitalizations continued to climb.

So far, however, deaths this season from the flu and flu-related pneumonia have lagged a little behind some recent bad seasons. There are as many as 56,000 deaths connected to the flu during a bad year.

The CDC said the amount of suspected flu cases at doctor office and hospitals last week matched that seen in 2009, when a new swine flu epidemic swept the country and panicked many people. Swine flu, also called pandemic H1N1, was a new strain that hadn’t been seen before. It first hit that spring, at the tail end of the winter season, but doctor visits hit their height in late October.

This flu season, hospitalization rates have surpassed the nasty season of the winter of 2014-2015, when the vaccine was a poor match to the main bug.

Health officials have said this year’s vaccine targets the flu viruses that are currently making people sick. However, preliminary studies out of Australia and Canada have found the shot was only 10 to 20 percent effective in those countries. How well it is working the U.S. won’t be known until next week.

This year, illnesses are commonly being reported in people who got a flu shot. Albertson said she did in late October. Jossi didn’t.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Firefighters have rescued an injured cat from an icy river in downtown Wichita after the animal apparently was thrown off an overpass.

A motorist spotted the black cat Thursday afternoon and called 911. Wichita Fire Lt. Kenneth Ast says the cat was sitting on ice in the middle of the Arkansas River when crews arrived.

 

 

Fire Capt. Neko McBee says the ice “was starting to crack” when rescuers in wetsuits and an inflated boat reached the animal. The fire department said in a tweet that it’s believed the cat was thrown off the overpass.

Firefighter Kuffler of the WFD Technical Rescue Team retrieves a cat from the frozen Arkansas River Thursday afternoon. The cat is believed to have been thrown off of the Kellogg overpass onto the frozen river. @craighacker photo pic.twitter.com/ZX6C5IeCjI

— WichitaFire.org (@wichitafireorg) February 9, 2018

The animal rescue group Beauties and Beasts has dubbed the cat “River” and said on Facebook that he sustained “severe” injury to his rear legs. The group asked for “loving thoughts.”

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — An adjunct chemistry instructor living in Kansas who was arrested last week by immigration officials and faced imminent deportation to Bangladesh has been granted a temporary stay of removal but that doesn’t mean he will be allowed to stay in the U.S., his attorney said Thursday.

Syed Ahmed Jamal, 55, a native of Bangladesh who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, was arrested Jan. 24 in the front yard of his home in Lawrence as he walked his children to school.

Federal Judge Glen Baker, of The Kansas City Immigration Court, issued the stay Wednesday and gave the Department of Homeland Security until Feb. 15 to respond to an emergency motion to stay the deportation and re-open immigration proceedings, attorney Rekha Sharma-Crawford said.

Jamal, who was held after his arrest in Missouri jails, is now in El Paso, Texas, and could be deported immediately — without time for an appeal — if Baker rules against him, Sharma-Crawford said. His wife, brother and three children haven’t been able to speak to him since his arrest.

If a longer stay is granted, Jamal will address his legal status in immigration court, said his brother, Syed Hussein Jamal,

“Basically from here, we’re going to fight in court,” Syed Hussein Jamal said during a news conference Thursday. “We’ll see how it goes.”

It was unclear why the Lawrence resident was transferred by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from Morgan County, Missouri, to Platte County, Missouri, to El Paso in one day but Sharma-Crawford said she suspects ICE intended to put him on a flight to Bangladesh without seeing his family again.

ICE officials told The Star earlier this week that a stay of removal is a “temporary humanitarian benefit. The stay is designed to allow the alien to get his/her affairs in order before they return to their home country.”

The arrest and possible deportation prompted a backlash, with an online petition drawing more than 58,000 signatures and a GoFundMe campaign raising more than $37,000 in less than a week. Hundreds of sympathizers also contacted members of Congress. U.S. Kansas Republican Reps. Kevin Yoder and Lynn Jenkins, as well as Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver from Missouri, contacted immigration authorities to discuss the case.

On Thursday, his relatives expressed their thanks to supporters.

“I guess I’ve become an activist,” said Jamal’s oldest son, Taseen, who is 14.

Syed Ahmed Jamal, a Bihari ethnic minority, arrived legally in the U.S. in 1987 to attend the University of Kansas but overstayed his visa while pursuing a doctorate. He has taught chemistry at area colleges and did research at hospitals. For the past five years, the Department of Homeland Security allowed Jamal to remain in the U.S. on orders of supervision, meaning he had to report on a regular basis to ICE offices, where he was issued temporary work authorization cards.

As recently as January, his work card enabled Jamal to secure a teaching position at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. He also has been an adjunct instructor at Rockhurst University and Kansas City Kansas Community College. He was on parental advisory boards at his children’s schools and last year made an unsuccessful run for a seat on the Lawrence school board.

ICE has not explained why it chose to arrest Syed Ahmed Jamal last month.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A chemistry professor living in Kansas who faced imminent deportation to Bangladesh has been granted a temporary stay.

Lawyers representing 55-year-old Syed Ahmed Jamal announced Thursday that a judge issued the temporary stay.

Jamal, who currently teaches at Park University in Missouri, was arrested Jan. 24 at his home in Lawrence, Kansas. He arrived legally in the U.S. in 1987 but after pursuing a doctorate he overstayed his visa. He and his Bangladeshi wife have three American citizen children.

Since his visa expired, he has been allowed to stay in the U.S. and report regularly to immigration authorities.

Jamal’s arrest caused a public outcry, with a petition drive seeking a stay for him drawing more than 54,000 signatures

It wasn’t immediately clear how long his temporary stay would be valid.

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LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Supporters of a Kansas chemistry instructor hope immigration officials will be lenient because he has lived in the United States for 30 years without problems and has a family.

Syed Ahmed Jamal was arrested in his front yard in Lawrence on Jan. 24 as he walked his seventh-grade daughter to school.

The 55-year-old Jamal arrived in the United States in 1987 to study at the University of Kansas. Most recently, he was teaching at Park University.

Jamal’s lawyer, Jeffrey Bennett, says an immigration judge allowed Jamal to remain in the country on a supervised basis provided he checked in regularly.

President Donald Trump has toughened immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say Jamal lost an appeal of a removal order four years ago