While coronavirus is taking over society this winter, Denmark has so far missed out on the annual flu season. It writes Kristeligt Dagblad.
In short, there is no flu in circulation right now, and it has not been this season at all.
– Less than 20 cases have been detected in Denmark since week 40, which is almost nothing. It is really not normal, says Lasse Vestergaard, who is responsible for monitoring influenza and excess mortality at the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) to the newspaper.
About every fifth Danish citizen is typically affected by a seasonal flu. And between 1,000 and 2,000 people die each year from the virus, SSI estimates.
At SSI, only those cases that are detected via a test or that lead to hospitalizations at one of the hospitals are registered.
Still, there is a significant difference in the number of flu cases this winter compared to earlier.
For while from the end of September 2020 until 6 January this year, 17 cases of influenza have been detected, in the same period last year there were 1009 cases.
In addition, no one has been hospitalized so far this season.
According to Lasse Vestergaard, the explanation for the low influenza infection is that many measures have been introduced to reduce infection with coronavirus – and it also affects other viruses.
Therefore, the flu will probably start to spread more when the coronary restrictions are relaxed, he says to Kristeligt Dagblad.
According to Kristeligt Dagblad, from October 2019 to May 2020, there were almost 7600 registered cases of influenza in Denmark. Almost 2300 were hospitalized during the period.
Source: The Nordic Page