#Flu in Australia to 08MAY2022
😷Quite the 5-year exponential rise in lab-confirmed cases (record rate?).
🤧7,173 notifications in past fortnight; 67Z% of the 10,599 for all of 2022
www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/…
😷Massive rise in #flu detections Australia-wide, especially in most recent reporting week
😷It's a FluA season across Aus, mostly A/H3N2 but still a good chunk of A/H1N1. A teensy bit of FluB in several States and Territories. WiIl FluB expand as we role towards winter?
FluA has been antigenically similar to corresponding vaccine components thus far but the one FluB/Victoria lineage isolate was antigenically DISsimilar. Something to watch.
Current southern hemisphere vaccine formulation for the vax nerds watching
Test numbers and quality lab testing capacity *is* very likely to be greater in Aus as labs built that up for SARS-CoV-2. A lot of the analysers (big 'sample in, result out' instruments) can just add a flu kit or a "multiplex" flu+SC2+XX kit. So can low-throughput but rapid MDx.
The national report notes 6% of sentinel GP visits for influenza-like illness (ILI) tested positive for #Flu and 5% this past fortnight of relevant samples in sentinel laboratories (YTD for labs the proportion has been 1.2%, so 5% is a big real jump)

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More from @MackayIM

May 9
"Almost 40% of patients that shared a hospital room with someone with occult SARS-CoV-2 infection became infected.
The risk was highest for patients sharing rooms with individuals with very low Ct counts. Others"
#ViralLoad #InfectiousDose
"although nosocomial spread of SARS-CoV-2 is relatively rare with standard infection protocols, there is a high risk of transmission for patients in shared hospital rooms if their roommate is acutely infected."
academic.oup.com/cid/article/74…
"PCR-positive results in contacts independently increased with higher case viral loads (lower cycle threshold [Ct] values)"
"Overall, 85.4% PCR-positive contacts had an index case with an estimated viral load of ≥10 000 RNA copies/ml (Ct ≤ 24.4)."
#ViralLoad #InfectiousDose
Read 4 tweets
Apr 25
Can't yet find any #Flu genotyping data for Aus (reporting only starts during "flu season").
So this is what our local southern hemisphere vaccine is composed of. Hopefully, it includes what's circulating.
From: tga.gov.au/media-release/…
Good old @nextstrain (I must be rusty) shows that the most recent FluA/H3N2s (Flu's slipperiest "big bad") - reported from Australia - fall within the A/H3N2 3C.2a1b.2a.2 clade (yellow arrow)
Couple of things to note:
🦠both (egg-grown and cell-grown) A/H3N2 vaccines use strains within the same clade, a little older, but look like a good vaccine "match"
🦠very little A/H1N1 strain, B/Victoria or B/Yamagata lineage activity in Aus atm
Read 4 tweets
Apr 24
Data form @NSWHealth showing #Flu (a bit early for that trajectory) taking a steep upwards turn now. Adenoviruses (normal but steep), MPV (way early) and RSV (a bit late) doing the same. Plenty of picornavirus (RVs and EVs) activity as well.
health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/cov…
I wonder if, after this flu season, the "normal" respiratory virus seasonality patterns will return. Would be nice to see a similarly drawn SARS-CoV-2 graph here now @NSWHealth . I do wonder how it's contributing to virus:virus interaction at a community level
Up in Queensland (still east coast of Australia), FluA, RSV and AdVs, RVs declining. SARS-CoV-2 % holding. Data from one of our latest private pathology labs (Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology)
snp.com.au/clinicians/rep…
Read 4 tweets
Apr 23
4 people tragically died in car accidents over the Easter weekend in New Zealand.
50 people died from COVID-19 over that same period in NZ.
Hopefully, there were equivalent "tragic loss of life" media stories.
◾️rnz.co.nz/news/national/…
◾️covid19.who.int/region/wpro/co…
In Queensland, Australia (population ~1.02x NZ's), there was 1 Easter road death and 7 COVID-19 deaths.

◾️stats.govt.nz/topics/populat…
◾️mypolice.qld.gov.au/news/2022/04/2…
In New South Wales, Australia, (popn ~1.60x NZ's), there were 7 road deaths and 44 CPOVID-19 deaths.
◾️abc.net.au/news/2020-03-1…
◾️abs.gov.au/statistics/peo…
Read 11 tweets
Mar 16
When we decide "the pandemic is over", we'll of course also have decided on additional permanent funding, staffing & support ...right?
Because hospitalisations are neither free, absorbable, & without harm to loved ones & patient families.
All require new💲&👩‍⚕️
ping @who
These hospitalisations are neither plummeting nor have they returned to zero. Even in a well-vaccinated country, like Australia, the baseline of hospital illness has been raised and has been fairly stable as we drop all our NPIs. Roll on the southern winter I guess.
And what do those vaccinations look like here?
Nationally we're at 81% double-doses but only 48% triple dosed. Most of the double dosing happened in Aug-Oct 2021. We're in 6-month territory now.
REALLY good time to get that booster (=3rd dose) if you haven't already.
Read 8 tweets

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