This is how flu season might affect the COVID-19 curve – World Economic Forum

Several months ago, the inhabitants of one half of the planet braced for a potentially devastating addendum to COVID-19 as another flu season approached. And then, nothing.

In much of the Southern Hemisphere, a meaningful flu season mostly failed to materialize as usual in April around the time autumn is poised to become winter. Now, in what is often the peak period for reported cases, they continue to lag well behind the norm.

For many experts, the notion of dealing with a heavy flu season and a pandemic at the same time is daunting. The combination could overwhelm health systems, and complicate the ability to make accurate diagnoses. Yet, the lack of flu season in the Southern Hemisphere was not entirely welcome.

Thats because the rest of the world north of the equator, including places that have struggled to contain COVID-19 during summer, now lacks a detailed blueprint for dealing with a combined flu season and pandemic as the weather begins to turn.

Researchers hoping to study the interaction between seasonal flu and the coronavirus came up empty in the Southern Hemisphere in recent months. In South Africa, government laboratories that would normally record more than 1,000 cases of flu between April and August instead recorded a single case. Meanwhile Australia reported 193 notifications of laboratory-confirmed influenza for July compared with 70,071 in the same month last year.

Australia did not see a spike in cases during what is normally flu season.

Image: World Economic Forum

Reasons for the diminished influenza spread in the Southern Hemisphere include social distancing and other measures implemented to combat COVID-19. Influenza and the coronavirus spread in similar ways, including via droplets emitted through coughing and talking. They also both put the elderly and people with chronic medical conditions at greater risk.

Now, countries in the Northern Hemisphere, including the US where flu season normally begins around October, must rely on flu shots and whatever preventive measures that have been put in place to fight COVID-19 and are being adhered to in order to likewise keep influenza in check.

The WHO has so far estimated that the crude mortality ratio for COVID-19 is between 3% and 4%, while mortality is usually well below 0.1% for seasonal influenza. Still, influenza-pneumonia is among the leading causes of death in the US. During the 2018-2019 flu season, it resulted in nearly 500,000 hospitalizations there and an estimated 34,157 fatalities.

Influenza is regularly a leading cause of death in the US.

Image: World Economic Forum

Experts seem to have mixed views on whether the Northern Hemisphere will now be better off thanks to the lack of influenza spread in the other half of the globe. In any case, they suggest getting a flu shot to better protect against a perfect storm of influenza and coronavirus as we await a COVID-19 vaccination.

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Image: World Economic Forum

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This is how flu season might affect the COVID-19 curve - World Economic Forum