Covid distancing may have weakened children’s immune system, experts say

Posted on June 9, 2021 by Admin

End of social distancing and mask-wearing could leave children vulnerable to common bugs

Scientists are concerned that measures to combat Covid-19 have weakened the immune systems of young children who have not been able to build up resistance to common bugs, leaving them vulnerable when mask-wearing and social distancing eventually end.

Contact with viral pathogens happens on a fairly regular basis and although it does not always lead to sickness, the exposure helps shore the immune system against the threat should the bugs be encountered again.

Doctors in South Korea call for flu vaccinations to be paused after 25 deaths

Posted on October 22, 2020 by Admin

Authorities say programme will continue after finding no direct links between the deaths and the vaccines

South Korean officials refused on Thursday to suspend a seasonal influenza inoculation effort, despite growing calls for a halt, including an appeal from a key group of doctors, after the deaths of at least 25 of those vaccinated. Health authorities said they found no direct links between the deaths and the vaccines.

At least 22 of the dead, including a 17-year-old boy, were part of a campaign to inoculate 19 million teenagers and senior citizens for free, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.

Flu vaccine shortages hit China after rush to avoid ‘twindemic’

Posted on October 7, 2020 by Admin

Long queues and inflated prices amid fears that flu could complicate anti-Covid effort

A surge in demand for flu shots in Chinese cities has caused shortages, long lines and triple markups on vaccines by scalpers selling them online.

Residents, afraid of the possibility of catching both the flu and Covid-19 – what some have called a “twindemic”, have rushed to clinics since China began its flu vaccine campaign in September.

Southern hemisphere has record low flu cases amid Covid lockdowns

Posted on September 17, 2020 by Admin

Data offers hope as winter looms in north and raises viability of eliminating future flu pandemics

Health systems across the southern hemisphere were bracing a few months ago for their annual surge in influenza cases, which alongside Covid-19 could have overwhelmed hospitals. They never came.

Many countries in the southern half of the globe have instead experienced either record low levels of flu or none at all, public health specialists in Australia, New Zealand and South America have said, sparing potentially tens of thousands of lives and offering a glimmer of hope as winter approaches in the northern hemisphere.

Boris Johnson says ‘anti-vaxxers are nuts’

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Admin

Prime minister makes comments while promoting extension of free winter flu jabs

Boris Johnson has said people opposed to vaccinations are “nuts” as he promotes an expanded programme of flu jabs that ministers hope will ease pressure on the NHS if there is a second wave of coronavirus this winter.

Visiting a doctors’ surgery in London on Friday, the prime minister said to staff: “There’s all these anti-vaxxers now. They are nuts, they are nuts.”

What happens when flu meets Covid-19?

Posted on July 19, 2020 by Admin

How seasonal viruses interact with the coronavirus is unknown – it may lessen or sharpen the pandemic – so flu vaccinations are vital

Optimists had hoped Covid-19 might not withstand the blistering heat of a British summer. However those hopes have faded: the virus staged a recent resurgence in Iran amid actual blistering temperatures, and has had no trouble persisting in sultry Singapore.

But what happens to Covid-19, and us, when the rain and chill – and flu and sniffles – of autumn set in? Especially, how will the annual winter flu epidemic play out amid a Covid-19 pandemic?

How Spanish flu nearly ripped apart Australia’s fledgling federation | Paul Daley

Posted on March 13, 2020 by Admin

A nation supposedly forged in the hellfire of war almost crumbled in the face of a virulent threat at home

Newly federated Australia, with its population not yet 5 million, was still enduring shocking fatalities on the European western front when its authorities began paying attention to the virulent strain of pneumonic influenza sweeping Britain.

Early Australian awareness of the “Spanish influenza” – an epidemic in Britain by mid to late 1918 – came with an acknowledgment that the new states grown of old colonies would need to stick together should the virus reach this isolated continent.