![]() ![]() “We absolutely view Australia as a crystal ball for gauging flu, so we need to take note of the worrying situation there,” said Prof Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London. Like in Australia, this could also coincide with a surge of Covid and other respiratory viruses - the country has expanded its booster campaign to include all over 50s, as cases have jumped by 40 per cent in the last three weeks. So what does this all mean for Britain?Įxperts said the country should brace for a nasty flu rebound come autumn, which would put renewed pressure on an already overstretched health system and undermine efforts to clear the NHS backlog. ![]() In the UK, he added, one of the worst winters for excess deaths in the 21st century was in 2014/2015, “when a new H3N2 variant was in circulation”. “If we look at winter excess mortality patterns prior to Covid, then peaks are usually associated with winters in which H3N2 viruses predominated.” “The elderly are more susceptible to the H3N2 viruses than to H1N1 viruses… also, the vaccines are somewhat less effective in protecting against H3N2 infection,” he told the Telegraph. This “generally has a greater impact”, according to John McCauley, director of the World Influenza Centre at the Francis Crick Institute. Although H1N1 is spreading, the dominant strain detected so far has been H3N2. The type of flu circulating has also raised alarm bells. They warned this trend may not hold all winter. However, hospitalisations have so far not risen to unusually high levels, with around 1,000 admissions since May, and deaths remain low, at 54 by June 19.Īccording to members of the Australian Actuaries Institute’s Covid working group, this could be due to the lag between an initial infection and severe disease because cases have risen fast in all age groups - including those less likely to get most sick or because the most vulnerable are also the most vaccinated (67 per cent of those over 65 have had the flu jab, compared to 26 per cent of those aged 15-50). 'Elderly more susceptible' to circulating strain “I’ve been a GP for 35 years now and I haven’t really seen a winter like this, where we’re seeing such extraordinarily high numbers of influenza,” Dr Bruce Willett, of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, said in an interview with ABC News. This week, supermarkets and chemists limited the purchase of tissues as stocks have dwindled, while there have been reports of shortages of cold and flu tablets as a wave of winter illness hits the east coast. “So this wave of influenza was always expected as restrictions eased, particularly when it coincided with usual seasonal peaks.” “The responses to Covid-19 also reduced immunity levels in the community,” said Professor Dale Fisher, chair of the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network. ![]() all at once.”Īlthough testing has increased due to heightened surveillance during the pandemic, Prof Mackay said the influenza surge is real as the percentage of tests coming back positive has risen.įlu has exploited population naivety in the wake of two years of limited transmission, which left people with waning protection as they have not recently been exposed to the virus. “It’s not only Sars-CoV-2 and flu either - there have been very high levels of RSV, rhinoviruses, adenoviruses etc. seeing a very high new BA.5-driven cases in Australia,” he added. “And that’s on top of the ongoing pandemic. “It started early and spiked more quickly than we were used to seeing before the pandemic. “Already exhausted healthcare workers have been hit hard by this latest infectious monster,” Professor Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland, told the Telegraph. In 2019, a particularly bad year, 14,000 infections were recorded in the same week. In the week leading up to June 2022, when the latest data is available, 27,000 cases were reported - roughly 10 times higher than the five-year average, which includes the pandemic period. But the country has been hit by a sharp and early explosion of infections over the last two months, a sign that the long-feared, post-pandemic flu revival has arrived. Typically, seasonal flu arrives in Australia in mid-July and cases peak in early-September. Influenza is “back with a vengeance” in Australia, foreshadowing a difficult autumn ahead for Britain. Throughout the pandemic, measures to curb Covid-19 also squashed the spread of an older foe: flu. Why Australia’s record flu surge is a bleak omen for the NHSĪ sharp and early explosion of influenza has hit the country, signaling that a long-feared, post-pandemic flu revival has arrived
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