Queensland flu season: State on track for most deadly year since 2019

Flu cases in Queensland are surging at rates faster than those experienced in NSW and Victoria, with authorities warning it’s only going to get worse.

Queensland is outpacing the likes of New South Wales and Victoria in flu cases as the potentially deadly virus sweeps through the state, with doctors saying poor vaccination rates are putting further strain on already overrun hospitals.

So far this year influenza cases have been highest in the Northern Territory – 513 notifications per 100,000 population, followed by Queensland at 228 cases per 100,000 population.

In total over 40,000 Australians have been infected – almost a quarter of those coming from Queensland – 12,156.

Mater Infectious Disease director Dr Paul Griffin said he was concerned that the way cases were climbing around the state we were on track for our most deadly year since the horror 2019 season.

The number of Queensland flu cases for the most recent week (15-21 May) shows an increase almost 500 from the previous week – going from 1428 to 1962.

Queensland's weekly influenza notifications by type, week and month of onset from January 1 to May 21, 2023. Picture: Qld Health

Of children aged younger than 16 years admitted with confirmed influenza to date, six per cent were admitted directly to ICU, compared to 19 per cent of adults aged 16 to 64 years, and three per cent of adults aged 65 years or older.

Dr Griffin said that hospitals were still housing plenty of Covid patients and now also those with influenza.

“Some of the flu patients are quite unwell with pneumonia so we’re seeing both (Covid and flu patients) and I guess it’s a bit of an alarming trend, because we’ve never truly seen both viruses, co circulating it at high levels at the same time.

“The flu consumes an enormous amount of healthcare resource each and every season, let alone during a bad season. That’s primary care visits, hospitalisation and emergency department utilisation as well.”

Influenza notifications in Queensland comparing each year from January 1, 2018 to May 21, 2023. Picture: Qld Health

He said it was unclear why Queensland was the second hardest hit state but suspected our pitiful vaccination rates could play a part.

“Typically we have a start to the season that’s usually behind the other states partly because we have different climate, so why our rate is seemingly one of the highest is a little bit difficult, I would think that perhaps vaccination rates play a part in that.

“But I also think it’s people’s perception of risk … I think maybe a different Covid experience (in Queensland) might have changed people’s perception of risk of a respiratory virus.

“For a long time, we were talking about how, children are, relatively speaking, spared from the chance of severe disease with Covid. But we know that with the flu and RSV, that children are a very significant risk group, they get these viral infections, and they can get very unwell from them and end up in hospital.”

Influenza notifications by age group from January 1 to May 21, 2023. Picture: Qld Health

National data suggest that the vaccination rate of children aged between six month and five years is a measly ten per cent.

“We know the flu vaccine doesn’t necessarily prevent everybody getting infected, but it does reduce that risk and what it really does do is reduce the chance of progressing to more severe disease,” Dr Griffin said.

“Our hospital beds are a finite resource, anything we can do to reduce the chance of one of those needing to be taken up is very important.

“Every winter we struggle a little bit with a sort of fairly usual number of flu cases, let alone a big flu season combined with Covid as well, that’s going to be quite a big struggle for us, I expect.”

AMAQ President Dr Maria Boulton. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Australian Medical Association Queensland president and family GP Dr Maria Boulton said that after a few quite years the flu was “back with a vengeance”.

“We already know that our hospitals are so stretched, and they already are operating beyond capacity, there’s just no leeway, there’s no surge capacity. So everything just adds to the already to the already strained system,” she said.

Dr Boulton said news that the Gold Coast hospital was using hotel rooms at SeaWorld illustrated the desperation of hospitals needing to make room for beds “because they fear that they will need the capacity because of the respiratory illnesses that are doing the rounds at the moment.”

“At the end of the day, people that need hospital care need hospital care,” she said.

“We do know, though, that there are people in hospital who are waiting for beds in aged care facilities and the waiting for NDIS packages but once again, for those people, the solution is to have those facilities or those packages available, because it’s not ideal for them to be in a hospital when they don’t need to be in a hospital. But it’s also not ideal for them to be in a hotel when they don’t need to be in a hotel.”

She said it was a shame that the 2500 new beds that the state government announced last year were not up and running “yesterday”.

Dr Griffin said hospital needed innovative approaches to managing bed block.

“For such a long time, we’ve just kept repeating that the same thing and being repeatedly frustrated that it’s not making things better. Here at the Mater we’ve got a really innovative program led by a colleague of mine, which is a hospital substitution program, where instead of people coming into hospital, there’s ways of managing things in the community. And we’ve got so many great tools that we can potentially leverage to help with that, including more rapid testing to be able to monitor people better in their homes and provide care where they are rather than them coming in. I think we’ve got a lot of potential there that we are under-utilising at the moment,” he said.

Both of the doctors pleaded with Queenslanders to stop being complacent and go back to adopting tried and tested methods that worked during the pandemic: staying at home when sick, being up to date with vaccinations and having good hand hygiene.

“I think sometimes people wait to have their flu vaccine because they wait for the flu season to be here, but don’t wait, the flu season is here,” Dr Boulton said.

“You can have a flu vaccine and a Covid vaccine on the same day.”

The latest figures from Queensland Health show that people in hospital with Covid are mostly people who haven’t had a Covid vaccine or had Covid infection in the last six months.

Originally published as Queensland flu season: State on track for most deadly year since 2019