Even during the summer, Georgia continues to monitor influenza surveillances. 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.