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Spike in flu cases causes shortage of some meds

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Area doctors are seeing a spike in Type A flu and it's creating a shortage of some medicines used to treat it.

Liberty Family Physicians in Weddington told patients it usually causes a very low fever or none at all and body aches are not a symptom.

[LINK: CDC information on the flu]

It does cause severe congestion and upper respiratory illness.

Doctors are giving prescriptions for Tamiflu but said it's been sold out in many pharmacies.

“We've had to divert patients to pharmacies they don’t usually go to because they have it in stock,” Edwin Marshall, with Liberty Family Physicians, said.

Twenty people, including at least two children, have died since the beginning of October.

From 2016 to 2017, 219 people died from the flu in North Carolina, which is a huge increase over the year before when 59 people died.

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