26 September 2023

Flu season continues into Spring

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NSW Health has warned that despite the Spring season arriving, the flu season has yet to show signs of relief.

According to NSW Health the last week of winter reported an upswing in hospital presentations and added another 20 deaths to the influenza toll.

Director of Communicable Disease at NSW Health, Dr Vicky Sheppeard said the latest figures showed children aged 5 to 9 have been particularly affected by the epidemic with a rise in influenza B virus cases.

“The extended period of influenza activity in 2019 has seen high numbers of presentations to hospital emergency departments, with over 245,000 presentations to NSW emergency departments for respiratory conditions this year, compared to 198,000 to this time in 2018 and 222,000 in 2017,” Dr Sheppeard said.

“Even though spring is around the corner, we urge people not to be complacent, particularly parents of young children, and to take simple hygiene precautions to avoid becoming an influenza statistic,” she said.

Dr Sheppeard said the latest weekly Influenza Surveillance Report showed 5,549 flu cases for the week ending 25 August, down from 5,800 notifications the previous week but taking the yearly total to 90,409.

She said that with the upswing in flu cases, NSW Health was again reminding people to consider all available options such as their local GP, medical centre or pharmacy if their illness is not an emergency.

“We have seen an increase in people presenting to our already very busy emergency departments because of flu, but most have not been severe cases and did not require hospital admission,” Dr Sheppeard said.

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