A Deadly Flu Season Has Already Killed 63 People in Australia This Year

So far this year, at least 63 people in Australia have been killed by the flu. Most of those cases have been aged-care residents, according to Australian Associated Press, while the youngest victim was just two years old. And though it’s fairly typical for a few hundred cases of the flu to have been reported by this time of the year, the total number of reported cases for 2019 is already more than 47,000. The number of cases reported last month alone was more than six times higher than the worst April on record, the ABC reports.

Flu season hasn’t just hit harder, but earlier than usual in 2019. The virus doesn’t normally start spreading until around April or May—this year, it started spreading in summer.

“Flu does kill,” virologist Ian McKay, an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, declared. “It kills young people, and especially it kills the elderly.”

A total of 26 people have died in Victoria so far; 25 have been killed in Queensland; while in South Australia, the state that appears to have been hit hardest by the deadly flu epidemic, the death toll is 27. It will be some time before experts know what’s causing such a severe outbreak. But Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has blamed the unseasonable spread of the virus on people travelling internationally when the flu is rampant in parts of the northern hemisphere.

"We are seeing a lot of communicable diseases spread through overseas travel, that's certainly been the case in terms of measles cases and flu cases," she said. "We have seen a very significant summer flu season this year as a result of people coming back from the northern hemisphere with the flu and spreading it in the community."

Professor McKay suggests another cause, hypothesising that this year’s worse-than-usual flu season could be the result of behavioural changes as people react to shifting weather patterns. “As we’re seeing warmer and warmer summers people might be going to air-conditioned areas and clustering and spreading viruses more than usual,” he proposed.

In any case, health authorities are recommending the flu vaccine to everyone older than six months. The federal government has a program of flu vaccines for vulnerable people, making it free for older adults, pregnant women, and children under the age of five. Associate Professor Sheena Sullivan, a senior epidemiologist at the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, says it’s the most effective method we currently have for preventing the spreading of the virus.

“The flu vaccine is not 100 percent effective,” she admitted, “but it is still the best available means we have for protecting people against the flu.”

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