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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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?
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Crystal-lee Wightley dies at her family’s home three days after getting sick
A Melbourne family say they are heartbroken after a 13-year-old girl died from the flu late last week, as the national death toll nears 300.
Crystal-lee Wightley had the flu for three days before she died at her family’s home.
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