The UK Health Security Agency’s chief medical adviser has warned that Britain will be hit by an unusually early flu wave that could begin as early as September.
But worse, it has triggered fears that the wave will collide with the increasing numbers of Covid and monkeypox cases this autumn.
Here we go again..…
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Apparently, diseases that were suppressed during the pandemic are coming back in new and peculiar ways
Experts say they are worried that a a lack of population immunity, because the UK has not experienced a proper flu season since the start of the Covid pandemic, couild lead to a potentially very bad winter.
Maybe the experts can come up with some new jabs for us! Oh wait…..
The Telegraph reports: Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), told a webinar hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine that health authorities were preparing for this eventuality.
Australia, currently going through its winter, is having its worst flu season in five years, Dr Hopkins said, adding: “We are planning for an influenza wave. I don’t know if people are following Australia, but we are watching very, very carefully.
“They have had their worst influenza season for more than five years. It started earlier and it rose very, very fast in all age groups, so we are expecting that we will see an early influenza wave.
“While we normally don’t see influenza really kick off until the end of November to December, that might happen as early as late September-October – that’s what we’re planning for.”
Dr Hopkins warned that monkeypox and Covid would also be on the rise, adding: “Our current planning assumptions are that we will see at least one [Covid] wave in the autumn-winter period.”
Covid cases and hospitalisations are currently increasing as a new omicron sub-variant, BA.5, exploits waning population immunity. The Zoe symptom tracker app said cases were up 27 per cent in a week and set to continue ticking upwards.
Dr Hopkins said that “for the next six months” people would need to assume that there would be ongoing community transmission of monkeypox. There are now between 20 and 40 new cases every day.
Cases have recently exceeded 1,000, official data show, and are spreading predominantly in gay and bisexual men.
London is at the epicentre of the outbreak, with 659 confirmed infected individuals, with the majority of patients gay and bisexual men between the age of 31 and 43.
Niamh Harris
oh well. big deal
I ve heard that homeless people have covid and are hungry and thirsty. Apparently there’s little interest from anyone with any food or water in the richest state in Australia. Seems that wealth breeds a certain detachment from the undeserving as some sort of religious morality.