Australians have been warned they’re placing “the entire group in danger” after the nation recorded its worst flu season up to now.
Some 352,782 confirmed instances of influenza have thus far been reported to the Nationwide Notifiable Illnesses Surveillance System this 12 months.
It is a greater than 20 per cent enhance on final 12 months’s determine of 289,133 confirmed instances.
Australia’s earlier peak flu season was 2019 when 313,454 instances had been recorded.
Immunisation Coalition chair Dr Rodney Pearce mentioned this 12 months’s numbers ought to function “a wake-up name”.
“Influenza is not only a nasty chilly; it will probably have extreme penalties, notably for weak populations,” he mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday.
“But, our surveys point out that many Australians are disengaged and really feel vaccination is pointless.
“This places the entire group in danger.”
Flu vaccination charges are at their lowest nationwide ranges since reporting to the Australian Immunisation Register grew to become necessary in 2021.
Between 1 March and 6 October this 12 months, 8,786,233 individuals in Australia acquired a flu shot. Throughout the identical interval final 12 months, 9,331,570 vaccinations had been recorded.
A nationwide survey of 25,000 individuals performed by the Immunisation Coalition in March this 12 months discovered simply 54 per cent of respondents felt influenza was a critical illness.
Related numbers (55 per cent) mentioned they did not see immunisation as a profit or being necessary, and wrongly believed that Could or June was the perfect time to get a flu shot (54 per cent), regardless of the season beginning in April.
The Immunisation Coalition mentioned federal and state governments wanted to play a larger function in addressing vaccination charges and misconceptions round influenza and flu photographs by investing extra in illness consciousness campaigns and sources for the general public.
Precedence ought to be given to figuring out these at a better threat, together with dad and mom of kids below 5 years outdated, adults aged 65 and over, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals aged 50 and over, and folks with particular medical situations, it mentioned.
