Experts say flu season could be worst for a decade

This year, James read this Flu strikes every winter, but this year, something seems to be different. In the summer, a seasonal flu virus mutated; it seems to have evaded some of our bodies; a flu season has started more than a month ahead and is a strain of flu that has been on record. The NHS has now issued a flu jab SOS as fears that this will lead to a brutal winter. There's a lot of nuance and confusion, but leading flu experts have told me that this year will not be surprising if this was the worst flu season in a decade.

We haven't seen a virus like this for a long time, so these patterns are unusual,

Prof Nicola Lewis, the head of the Francis Crick Institute's World Influenza Centre, says. It does concern me, absolutely, she says. "I'm not panicking, but I am worried.

So what's going on? And what can we do? Scientists monitor influenza virus evolution because they change on a regular basis, and the seasonal flu vaccine must be updated each year to keep up. This change is occurring in a pattern that has been described as

shift and drift. The virus makes minor changes most of the time, but every so often a dramatic change occurs as the virus migrates rapidly. That happened in June this year. Prof Derek Smith, the director of the University of Cambridge's pathogen evolution center, said seven mutations appeared in a strain of H3N2 seasonal flu, resulting in o

fast rise" in reports of the mutated virus.

In the middle of the northern hemisphere's summer, this happened during flu season. It almost certain that it will sweep the world, Prof Smith says. By September, when children returned to school, the nights drew in and the weather began to decrease, there was an increase in infections. Exactly what the mutations are doing is being investigated, but they are certainly assisting the virus in destroying some of the antibodies we have built up over years of flu viruses and vaccines. The result is that the virus is finding it easier to infect people and spread around the world, including Japan.

If the virus can spread more easily, it does not have to wait for more favourable wintery weather – when we spend more time indoors with the heating on and the windows closed – to start the flu season. I think it's going to be a good flu season, Prof Lewis says. If you recall your R numbers from the pandemic (that is, the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to), the new mutant has a leg up on the previous one. The R number for seasonal flu is usually around 1. 2, while the early estimate for this year is 1. 4, said Prof Lewis. So, if 100 people had flu, they would reach 120 in a normal year and 140 this year.

Worst flu season for a decade?

It's very likely it's going to be a bad flu season, and it'll be out quickly because we're just getting off,

Prof Christophe Fraser, of the University of Oxford's Pandemic Sciences Institute.

There are signals that this flu season is going to be worse than any of the flu seasons we've seen in the last ten years.

In a typical flu season, one-in-five of us get sick, but this year, it could be more severe. However, all these estimates are also clouded in uncertainty. While this year had the worst flu season on record this year, others are taking a look at Australia for clues, but it did not face the same mutated H3N2 we see. In the germ-fest that is the school playground, we know the virus is spreading quickly in children. However, the immunity that a 10-year-old has developed will be quite different from that of their grandparents, whose immune defenses may have been shaped by six times as many flu seasons. Experts will be monitoring closely as the virus begins to infect older age groups in the coming weeks.

'It's a nastier virus'

The type of influenza we are seeing this year, according to history, is more severe, especially for elderly people. There are several strains of flu, and you may have noticed some of the flu viruses such as H1N1 swine flu, which caused a pandemic in 2009, or H5N1, which is the most common flu killing birds around the world. In a group of H3N2 influenzas, the latest mutations have occurred.

H3 is always a hotter virus, it's a nastier virus, so it'll be more noticeable on the population,

Prof Lewis said. It's important to note that some of us will get flu and develop no symptoms at all, while others get a sudden fever, body aches, and exhaustion, but older and more vulnerable groups can be deadly. Almost 8,000 people died from flu last year, and nearly 16,000 people died in the 2022-23 flu season. The NHS is also brace for a tough flu season. So what can we do about it? The simplest recommendation is to get the seasonal flu vaccine – the NHS in England issued a flu jab SOS saying there were 2. In the upcoming week, there will be 4 million vaccine slots available. According to Prof Lewis, this year is definitely the most important year to get vaccinated, and that

if you have been called by your GP, please get your flu vaccine as soon as possible. However, this year's vaccination is not a good match for the mutated virus. In February, the vaccine was chosen in order to ensure the millions of doses that were needed, but then the new mutant appeared in June.

Some security is better than no insurance,Prof Fraser said,this year is likely to be one of the years in which the match is better, but it is not an ideal situation. The vaccination will also cause the body to produce antibodies that can recognize and stick to flu. However, the most significant health benefits are expected to be in lessening the severity of the disease rather than simply stopping you from getting sick or slowing the virus outbreak. Also, the flu vaccine shields against many species of flu, each of which may cause their own waves of infections.

Whatever strains are out there this winter, we can be sure that the vaccine will still provide some cover to those who are most vulnerable from illness and hospitalization. Meanwhile, doctors have been sent an alert that early antiviral therapy reduces the risk of flu complications. To help prevent outbreaks, Japan is also going through an early flu season and has closed down schools to help prevent epidemics. These are not lockdowns like Covid, but short-term steps that the country takes to prevent the virus from spreading. Nobody knows for certain what will happen in the coming months. Prof Lewis says,

It could all go away by next week,says Prof Lewis,but I don't think it will.