This summer, Georgia is participating in year-round influenza surveillance. Influenza sentinel providers report weekly the total number of patients they have seen, as well as the number of those patients who were seen for influenza-like illness. The sentinels also send occasional throat specimens from flu-like illness cases to the Georgia Public Health Laboratory for isolation and characterization of circulating influenza viruses. Although influenza activity typically peaks during the winter months, influenza viruses circulate year-round and remain a threat to persons who are very young or old or who have chronic medical conditions. The emergence of a novel influenza strain capable of causing a pandemic is also a possibility, and year-round surveillance improves public health's ability to rapidly identify new strains of the virus.