If ever there was a time to think differently about flu, this is it. The chance to learn lessons from the pandemic is greatest while memories are fresh
rumbles on. In the week ending May 21st, one in 60 adults in Britain were estimated to be infected; 16,035 people have died with the virus since February 23rd, which was when England’s restrictive measures ended. But only a new, more harmful variant would prompt a return to the rules of the past.
If a respiratory infection worsens sufficiently, treatment at hospital is needed. As many as 40,000 people are hospitalised each year with breathing difficulties caused by the flu; the average total in-patient cost is £7,500 . Because respiratory infections are slow to shift, patients stay for 11 days on average. As a result, influenza frequently threatens to overwhelm theduring its winter peaks, when occupancy of the system’s 100,000 hospital beds rises from about 88% to over 95%.
The next line of defence is surveillance, to monitor infection rates and emerging strains, and to allocate health-care resources accordingly. At the moment flu surveillance in Britain, which is estimated to cost around £1m a year, mostly consists of gathering influenza-like illness data from a sample ofsurgeries and search trends from Google.
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