The 2015–2016 influenza season is shaping up to be lighter than physician offices and hospitals have seen in recent years, with fewer flu positives reported, a lower death count, and a smaller share of flu-like illnesses among outpatients.

Last year’s flu season, by contrast, was “very hectic,” says MAJ Charlotte Lanteri, PhD, deputy chief of microbiology at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Tex. It is not just the lower number of patients presenting with flu-like symptoms in the medical center’s inpatient and outpatient settings that has made for a quieter season so far, she says. Also contributing to the peaceful, easy feeling at Fort Sam Houston—at least as regards the flu—is the medical center’s implementation of a rapid molecular test for influenza A and B.