With the onset of winter, the flu season has already begun in many countries around the world, with the cold weather and spread of the virus already putting pressure on many health services.
According to the Daily Star, Chinese hospitals are fast filling up with flu patients and about 95 percent of them have come down with a flu strain known as H2N2.
The remaining few have a couple of other viruses, including H1N1, otherwise known as Swine Flu, but it’s the most dominant strain which is causing the most concern right now.
It adds that children aged between five and 14 are being more affected than others and hospitals are having to handle the strain of what is shaping up to be a very busy flu season.
The Mirror reports that people have been describing this year’s flu as ‘so terrifying’ and saying that when they’ve been admitted to hospital they’ve had to wait in there for a long time.
Hospitals are busy with the winter flu season (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
The H3N2 strain is thought to be ‘super infectious’, ‘hotter’ and ‘nastier’, with symptoms such as chest pains, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Professor Nicola Lewis, the director of the World Influenza Centre at the Francis Crick Institute, told the BBC: “We haven’t seen a virus like this for a while, these dynamics are unusual.
“It does concern me, absolutely. I’m not panicking, but I am worried.”
It’s a problem which is occurring all around the world, and while flu is not typically fatal to most people, it’s a far more dangerous prospect to the elderly and vulnerable who every year face the dangerous virus.
This year is expected to be particularly dangerous because of the way H3N2 has developed.
Medical experts are warning that it looks like many countries are in for a difficult winter flu season (Li Hongbo/VCG via Getty Images)
Over here in the UK, the virus has been called a ‘super flu’ with the NHS having warned that it’s expecting the worst flu season in years due to a series of mutations in the summer to the H3N2 virus.
Seven mutations appeared in the seasonal flu strain and there is a concern over how Australia had its largest flu season on record, which tends to be a decent predictor for how things will pan out in other countries.
The mutations make the virus more able to resist the seasonal flu virus, though it is still an effective countermeasure and something those particularly vulnerable, such as the elderly, should get.
The health experts are urging people to get vaccinated as many doctors have been reporting that admissions this year are several times what they were last year.
Get yourself vaccinated.
