Experts say flu has taken advantage of the naivety of the population in the wake of two years of limited transmission, leaving people with diminishing protection because they haven’t been exposed to the virus recently. This has also contributed to unusual disease outbreaks including RSV, hepatitis and stage A – which have now killed eight children in the UK.
But Prof Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, said post-Covid shifts in attitudes to infectious diseases could dampen a potential outbreak in the UK, while vaccination coverage and small outbreaks over the past two years boosted immunity just enough can strengthen to provide protection to the majority of people.
Currently, more than 75 percent of people over 65 have had their flu vaccine. But the UKHSA has warned that take-up among pregnant women is just 29.3 per cent – and that coverage among two- and three-year-olds is much lower than it has been for the past two years.
“Warnings of a severe flu season this winter would carry more weight if we hadn’t had the same warnings in 2020-21 and 2021-22,” he said. “The bottom line is that predicting flu this winter is not easy, which underscores the importance of quality surveillance to help us keep a handle on the situation as it develops.”
Concerns about human flu come as authorities try to contain a related threat: bird flu. So far, around four million poultry – including chickens, ducks and turkeys – have been culled in the UK, and more than 100 million internationally.
The strain currently spreading is a version of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus. A total of 868 human cases of H5N1 have been reported to WHO since 2003, including more than 450 deaths — including a 38-year-old woman in China in October.