Could flu really kill 30,000 people in Britain this year as our immune systems, rendered naïve after two years of lockdowns and other anti-Covid measures, are over-ridden by the virus? That suggestion has been reported in places this morning.
There has certainly been a sharp increase in people reporting flu symptoms over the past couple of weeks, as shown up in the various metrics used by the UK Health Security Agency. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic there are now more people being admitted for flu – at 6.8 per 100,000 in the week to 11 December – than are being admitted for Covid (6.6 per 100,000).
To reach 30,000 deaths from flu alone would take something of a calamity
Yet to reach 30,000 deaths from flu alone would take something of a calamity. It turns out that the 30,000 figure being touted derives from a figure provided by a charity, the Health Foundation, for the number of deaths from influenza and pneumonia experienced in Britain in a bad year, like 2017/18.
The complication is that published statistics for flu deaths tend to combine flu with pneumonia – the latter of which tends to carry off large numbers of people who are on the point of death from other conditions.
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