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The Flu Was Virtually Non-Existent In Australia This Year

The Flu Was Virtually Non-Existent In Australia This Year

There were only a few hundred cases of seasonal flu in 2021 compared to the hundreds of thousands seen in 2019.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

New Australian figures have revealed influenza was virtually non-existent in 2021 compared to other years.

The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System identified just 484 cases and no deaths up to August 29 this year.

Last year, there were more than 20,000 notifications of influenza and 37 deaths.

When you compare it to 2019, which was well above the five-year average, you can see just how incredibly the flu has vanished.

Two years ago, there was a whopping 313,033 notifications of laboratory-confirmed influenza and 953 deaths.

When breaking down the 2021 flu figures, nearly half came from Queensland (235), Victoria had 75, NSW recorded 61 and the Northern Territory notched 31 case.

Pixabay

Even more interesting was that the majority of the cases came from people coming in from overseas.

The World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza's deputy director, Professor Ian Barr, dug into this incredible result for 2021.

He told the ABC: "The whole influenza world is topsy-turvy at the moment. This is the time we should be seeing not a few hundred, a few thousands cases per state, with tens of thousands of cases overall throughout Australia.

"We've never seen figures this low ever before."

He said all the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions have played their part in stopping the spread of the flu. The closure of Australia's international borders as well as keeping children to do remote learning are believed to be the big hitters in the fight against the flu.

University of Queensland virologist Dr Kirsty Short told the national broadcaster while it's a good result, it could prove to be a negative thing in the years to come.

"Maybe we're going into a severe flu outbreak," she said. "The optimistic side is because we haven't had much flu circulating, maybe the virus hasn't mutated so much, so that our past vaccines will still provide good protection.

"The reality is, we don't know and it really could go either way.

"It's really difficult to say...but it's definitely something we all need to be watching because the last thing we want is to have a bad flu season after going through everything with COVID."

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Australia