Flu vaccination rates drop despite free jabs, spiking cases

NSW is seeing one of its worst ever flu seasons on the back of lengthy Covid restrictions, but not even the offer of a free jab is enough to get people vaccinated.

More than 17,000 people across the state woke up feeling sick last week but it turns out they didn’t have Covid – they had Faux-vid.

It seems rather than being latecomers to the pandemic, they had fallen victim to an early and particularly nasty flu season.

Covid and the flu have almost identical symptoms, with testing one of only two ways to differentiate between the viruses.

The other is the amount of sympathy and understanding the sufferer receives.

While almost all of the 17,000 Faux-vid sufferers had the same sore throats, nasty coughs, fever and aches and pains, they lacked that crucial extra line on the Rapid Antigen Test.

Move over Covid- NSW residents have been struck down with Fauvid, a bad batch of the flu.

That meant when they told family, friends and work colleagues, they were more likely to get sneers than sympathy.

It also meant there were no regulations stopping them from going to the shops, or school, or work or onto buses and trains … meaning the rest of us could also pick up a case of Faux-vid.

Dr Jeremy McAnulty. Picture: Gaye Gerard

NSW Health’s Dr Jeremy McAnulty said it was the Covid restrictions that had ironically caused a more ­severe flu this year.

“We’ve been expecting this because for the last two years we haven’t had a real flu season,” Dr McAnulty said.

“We’ve got people not having the normal immunity they get from having a previous infection, so we’re seeing a lot more people susceptible to influenza.”

NSW Health reported 17,404 flu cases in the week to June 11, with the majority of those influenza A.

It comes mid a slow uptake of flu vaccinations.

The figure accounts for 30 per cent of the state’s infections so far this year. But flu cases remain far fewer than Covid, of which there were 42,060 across NSW last week.

In NSW 217 people were admitted to hospital with a “flu like illness”. Half of those were aged 65 and older.

South Western Sydney Local Health District recorded the most flu cases, with 15 per cent of the state’s total.

Infections have run rampant among young people, with five to 19-year-olds accounting for about 40 per cent of cases.

Matraville mother-of-five Paula Sissian-Turnbull said some of her kids had already experienced a bad flu this year. “I’ve got three sisters who are nurses and one who’s done Covid nursing,” she said.

“She just said: ‘The flu is far worse at the moment than Covid, so can you all please get vaccinated’. So we did.”

Only about 2.7 million people in NSW have been vaccinated against the flu.

That’s despite the state government making the jab free for everyone during June for the first time.

Terry White Chemmart chief pharmacist Brenton Hart said he feared many were “vaccine fatigued” after three rounds of the Covid jab.