The Covid-19 lockdown might have wreaked havoc on the economy and brought about unprecedented changes to daily life, but it appears to have delayed the spread of colds and the flu.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases recently explained that while the traditional winter flu season usually began to spike in the country around the middle of April, they detected two flu strains in the Western Cape by the beginning of last month only.The NICD said the Respiratory Syncytial Virus season usually began at the end of February but, this year, it was barely detected by the end of last month.
In Hong Kong, which registered its first coronavirus on January 23, this year’s flu season was 63% shorter than usual while the northern hemisphere’s flu season ended about six weeks earlier than normal. According to official statistics, flu affects more than 45 000 South Africans each year and between three and five million people worldwide.This also has significant consequences for the ailing economy as scores of infected workers are absent from work as they recover.
“Vaccinating against flu, especially this year, means that you will potentially be less of a burden to the health-care system, and avoid being flagged as a possible coronavirus case,” professor and head of the division of medical virology at the University of Stellenbosch Wolfgang Preiser recently wrote in a paper for the institute.
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