As many as 646,000 people are dying globally from seasonal influenza each year, U.S. health officials said on Wednesday, a rise from earlier assessments of the disease's death toll.
Global death rates from seasonal influenza are likely between 291,000 and 646,000 people each year, depending on the severity of the circulating flu strain, they said.
That is up from a prior estimate range of 250,000 to 500,000 deaths, according to officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in the medical journal The Lancet.