Switzerland: will we have an almost flu free winter?

Several countries in the southern hemisphere, including Australia, experienced an almost flu-free winter. Will it be the same in Switzerland? The experts interviewed by “Matin Dimanche” are cautiously optimistic. According to the latest weekly report on influenza infections of the Federal Office of Public Health (OFSP), “the flu virus has not been detected in any region of Switzerland in the past two weeks”.

The current number of detections is much lower than in previous years “, confirms Ana Gonçalves, a biologist at the National Reference Center on Influenza in Geneva. She specifies, however, that” the epidemic can happen later, it is very difficult to predict and extrapolate on this basis “.

The barrier measures put in place against Covid-19 are one of the ways proposed by researchers to explain the low incidence of influenza. The latter have already managed to reduce the number of colds, coughs and gastroenteritis in children, especially in spring, adds the newspaper. Dr Maya de Planta, a member of the Swiss pediatrics committee, points out, for example, that during the first birth, for six weeks, “she saw no viruses in children who were vaccinated”.

At the end of October, Virginie Masserey, head of the infection control section of the OFSP, had also recalled that the measures taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus would also have prevented the flu and that additional doses of flu vaccines. it had been ordered and should be available in November and December. The goal is to vaccinate vulnerable people who would require hospitalization in case of illness.