Health systems around the Southern Hemisphere were plagued by an annual surge in influenza cases a few months ago, which flooded hospitals with Covid-19. They never came.
Public health experts in Australia, New Zealand and South America say many countries in the southern part of the world have reported fewer or no flu cases, potentially saving thousands of lives and giving them a glimmer of hope. As winter approaches in the Northern Hemisphere.
Not a single influenza case has been found since general practitioners in New Zealand began examining patients in June, health data show; About 57% of the samples they collected last year were positive.
The last flu cases were reported in April by major hospitals in the country’s largest city, Land Cland. “Nice. There’s nothing. There’s no influenza,” said Michael Baker, a professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington.
New Zealand’s Covid-19 rate is the lowest in the world, but despite the epidemic, people have experienced the coldest months on record. “Our extreme winter mortality rate has largely disappeared,” Baker said.
A tracking system that monitors a group of at least 30,000 people for influenza-like symptoms shows that 0.3% of New Zealanders reported a cough or fever in a few weeks during the winter, a tenfold decrease in previous years.
This trend is especially true in the Tasman Sea, Australia, where the Covid-19 ban also strongly condemns the rate of flu and other respiratory illnesses. More than 131,000 cases of influenza were reported in the country during the peak months of July and August last year, according to government figures. In the same period of this year, there were 315.
Prof. Deputy Director of the World Health Organization’s Collaboration Center for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne. Ian Barre said the case has been rocked since March.
Influenza has killed less than 50 Austral Australians this year, compared to more than 50,050 last year, and no deaths in the last three to four months.
Even across South America and South Africa, where lockdowns are difficult or difficult to enforce, and Covid-19 is widespread and killing thousands, flu rates are below or do not exist at historical rates – increased testing for Although. In America, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
This obvious paradox – SARS-Cavi-2 is evolving rapidly when influenza virtually disappears – shows the main difference between the two viruses. Seasonal flu is not only less deadly, but significantly less viral, Baker said.
The population is more susceptible to seasonal influenza, whether it is acquired naturally or by vaccine, while the travel ban, introduced in March, hinders the normal migration of the virus from the Northern Hemisphere to the South.
As an unprecedented live experiment on a massive population, it could provide some good news for Northern Hemisphere countries going into their own flu season, such as dry air and more time inside the home is expected to increase the Covid-19 rate. Relatively low stiffness is also surprisingly potent for suppressing influenza and other common respiratory illnesses.
“You’ll still see the flu season, but I expect it to be much less intense,” Baker said. “The countries of the Northern Hemisphere that are actively suppressing Kovid-19 to some extent should be given a lot of protection. [from influenza] By doing that. ”
This could mean that more people in the coming years are more susceptible to the flu strain, which has not taken any kind of immunity this year, Barrow said. Will decrease. Even after the epidemic subsided.
In a year that will be studied by public health experts for decades, it also points to new ways to fight future influenza epidemics that some scientists see as inevitable.
“[Before,] It was believed that when a new influenza pandemic virus arrives, you will spoil it, you cannot stop it. “Now we know that if you had a pandemic flu virus of sufficient severity, you could take the eradication approach or the extinction approach, as Taiwan has done with the Covid-19.”
