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Flu season may be getting a head start this year, and experts say that's a good reason not to put off your flu shot.

Flu tests are coming back positive at unusually high rates for early fall on the U.S. West Coast and in the United Kingdom, reports Nature.

In Japan, outbreaks in August and early September forced some schools to close just as students were returning from summer break.

"It would be an incredibly early season" for the United States if West Coast cases keep rising at their current pace, Scott Hensley, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Nature. In a typical year, U.S. flu season peaks in December and January.

Most of the early U.S. cases involve a type of flu called H1N1. That's a switch from last season, when a fast-spreading version of another type, H3N2, took over.

H1N1 accounted for 96% of U.S. cases tested for type during the week ending Sept. 26. H3N2 made up nearly all the rest, and no influenza B turned up, Nature reported, citing federal data.

Still, it's too early to say how the season will play out. The early numbers come from far fewer positive tests than doctors see at the height of flu season.

"An early start doesn't necessarily mean a more severe season," James Hay, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford in England, told Nature .

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