17-09-2020

Health systems across the southern hemisphere were bracing a few months ago for their annual surge in influenza cases, which alongside Covid-19 could have overwhelmed hospitals. They never came.

Many countries in the southern half of the globe have instead experienced either record low levels of flu or none at all, public health specialists in Australia, New Zealand and South America have said, sparing potentially tens of thousands of lives and offering a glimmer of hope as winter approaches in the northern hemisphere.

General practitioners in New Zealand have not detected a single influenza case since they started screening patients in June, health data shows; last year about 57% of the samples they collected were positive.

The last flu cases detected by major hospitals in Auckland, the country�s largest city, were in April. �It�s amazing. There�s just nothing there at all. No influenza,� said Michael Baker, professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington.

A tracking system that monitors a cohort of at least 30,000 people for influenza-like symptoms shows as few as 0.3% of New Zealanders reported coughs or fevers some weeks during their winter, a tenfold decrease on some previous years.

The trend holds true across the Tasman Sea in Australia, where Covid-19 restrictions have also deeply dented rates of flu and other respiratory illnesses. The country recorded more than 131,000 influenza cases in the peak months of July and August last year, according to government data. Over the same period this year, there were 315.