(Newsweek) At Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, patients are waiting four to six hours to be seen in the emergency room, 12 to 24 hours for a bed — twice as long as usual. The Washington, D.C. Hospital Center emergency room had its three busiest days ever on Jan. 2, 3 and 4. Across the country, at the Savon drugstore in Manhattan Beach, Calif., a long line of sufferers shuffled slowly toward the pharmacy counter, clutching prescriptions, which the store might not even be able to fill.

It’s too soon to say if the Millennium Flu will be unusually widespread or severe, but anecdotes and statistics both suggest that it has struck with unusual swiftness. In the last week of 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 35 states reported “regional” or “widespread” flu outbreaks (map), more than triple the number a year ago; of the specimens collected by doctors and sent to the CDC for testing since October, 14 percent were positive for flu - more than 7 times the percentage at this time last year.

Flu cases often peak in February; before the bug goes into its springtime torpor this year, about one American in ten will be stricken, estimates Dr. Jennifer Bridges, a CDC spokeswoman. “My impression is that it’s worse this year than in recent years, and it’s getting worse,” says Dr. Stephen Baum, chairman of the department of medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. “I don’t think we’ve seen the peak yet.”