Get your flu jab as worst season in a decade predicted…

I was talking to a pharmacy owner over the weekend who said they had hired an extra pharmacist over the winter to cope with the rising demand from people with the flu.

Experts are worried that this could be the worst flu season in a decade. From the BBC:

Flu strikes every winter, but this year something seems to be different.

A seasonal flu virus suddenly mutated in the summer. It appears to evade some of our immunity, has kick-started a flu season more than a month early, and is a type of flu that history suggests is more severe.

The NHS has now issued a “flu jab SOS” as fears grow that this will add up to a brutal winter.

There is a lot of nuance and uncertainty, but leading flu experts have told me they would not be shocked if this was the worst flu season for a decade.

“We haven’t seen a virus like this for a while, these dynamics are unusual,” says Prof Nicola Lewis, the director of the World Influenza Centre at the Francis Crick Institute.

“It does concern me, absolutely,” she adds. “I’m not panicking, but I am worried.”

History suggests that the form of influenza we are facing this year is more severe, particularly for older people.

There are multiple types of flu and you may have heard some of the names like H1N1 swine flu, which caused a pandemic in 2009, or H5N1, the current flu killing birds around the world.

The fresh mutations have happened in a group of H3N2 influenzas.

“H3 is always a hotter virus, it’s a nastier virus, it’s more impactful on the population,” says Prof Lewis.

It is worth remembering that some of us will get flu and develop no symptoms at all, while others get a sudden fever, body aches and exhaustion – but the virus can be deadly in older and more vulnerable groups.

Last year, nearly 8,000 people died from flu, and in the 2022-23 flu season there were nearly 16,000 deaths. The NHS is already anticipating a tough flu season.

So what can we do about it?

The clear advice is to get the seasonal flu vaccine.

So there you go, if you are an older reader or have underlying health conditions get your jab. Or if you have the time and money disappear to Spain for the winter.

It is worthwhile reading the NHS flu advice now, and make sure you are stocked up on all the essentials. Most importantly if you are sick don’t be going into work etc and spreading it around.

Brian O'Neill

Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.