Medics warn on flu jab apathy

A REBOUND flu season could hit Australia this winter, with vaccine complacency and a low infection rate last year to blame.

The Doherty Institute’s Professor Terry Nolan has urged people to book in a jab after a survey revealed up to five million Australians aren’t planning to, mistakenly believing improvements in hand hygiene and social distancing will protect them.

The survey, commissioned by biopharmaceutical company Sanofi Pastuer, involved more than 1000 Australian adults and already left out people who are opposed to vaccines.

It found one in four believed public health improvements meant the vaccine wasn’t necessary, but Prof Nolan said last year’s measures, and subsequent low influenza infection rate, meant herd immunity was lower than usual.

“It would be fair to expect more influenza cases this year,” Prof Nolan said. “To assume everyone is practising (social distancing) … people have just settled back to the norm.”

He said emergency departments were already busy, sometimes instructing ambulances to bypass their hospital, and he fears a bad influenza season – as seen in 2017 and 2019 – has the potential to overload a strained system.

“Behind the scenes people working in the emergency departments and GPs are dealing with people getting sick at very high levels (during bad flu seasons),” he said.