Get your flu shots, Territorians

IF your work is offering up free flu jabs this month, health experts at the NT Center for Disease Control say to sign up and get vaccinated

CDC experts say to get vaccinated if your office offers the program

IF your work is offering free flu jabs this month, health experts at the NT Centre for Disease Control say to sign up and get vaccinated.

NT CDC head of immunisation Dr Ros Webby said the NT Health Department’s vaccine wouldn’t be ready until April – but it was normal for Darwin workplaces to start offering jabs earlier.

“If you get the vaccine – in March, April or May, that’s good. That means we’ve got a population that has a high coverage and hopefully less disease spreading in 2019,” Dr Webby said.

“We can have influenza at different times of the year,” she said. “It is a bit tricky here to know when is the best time to get the vaccine – particularly in the Top End.” During the Top End’s last flu season, six people died and hundreds more were hospitalised.

The CDC’s quarterly disease control bulletin showed the 2018 flu season started late but was “intense” across the Top End. In the Territory, there were four weeks from November 26 to December 23 with more than 150 flu notifications each week and 680 cases in December of which 254 people were hospitalised.

CDC head of disease surveillance Dr Peter Markey (pictured) said in 2017, there were two separate flu seasons – one over the Wet and one in August.

He urged Territorians to get their flu shots as soon as it came on to the market.

“There were over 1100 lab confirmed cases in the outbreak all together and there were 400 hospital admissions in the Top End,” he said.