Australia is headed for a bad flu season after a surge in cases in summer and autumn.
Experts predict about 4000 people will die from complications due to influenza this year as the number of infections increase again following a quiet 2018.
There have already been 40,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza in 2019, almost three times the number recorded at the same time in recent years.
Experts from the Immunisation Coalition have urged people to get vaccinated now so they are protected during the winter flu peak.
“What we are really concerned about is that these very large numbers don’t continue on through winter,” medical virologist Professor William Rawlinson said today.
He said the number of flu cases could end up being the highest since 2017, when a quarter of a million laboratory-confirmed cases were recorded.
The 2017 influenza season was the worst since the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Last year…
Source: News Agency of Nigeria
