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A lone guy looks at the Yarra River and this month’s closing empty central shopping district in Melbourne, Australia.
JOHANNESBURG – Winter is ending in the southern hemisphere, and country after country – South Africa, Australia, Argentina – had a surprise: their measures against COVID-19 have also blocked the flu.
But there is no guarantee that the northern hemisphere will have two epidemics as its own flu season looms.
“This can be one of the worst seasons from a public fitness perspective, with COVID and the flu joining. But it can also be one of the most productive flu seasons he’s ever had,” said Dr Robert Redfield, AMERICA’s director. But it’s not the first time Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Associated Press.
U. S. fitness officials are in the process of being able to do so. But it’s not the first time They are pressuring Americans to receive a record number of flu shots this fall, so hospitals may not be defeated in a twindemic duel.
It also becomes transparent that wearing masks, avoiding crowds and keeping their distance are protections that “are not express to COVID. ” They will be paints for any respiratory virus, “Redfield said.
The proof: South Africa regularly reports widespread flu during the winter months in the southern hemisphere, May through August. This year, tests carried out through the country’s National Institute of Communicable Diseases found almost none, which is unprecedented.
School closures, public meetings, and calls to wear masks and hand washes have “reversed the flu,” dr. Cheryl Cohen, director of the high school’s breathing program.
This only meant lives stored from the annual cost of the flu, however, “freed up the ability of our hospitals to treat patients with COVID-19,” Cohen added.
In Australia, the National Department of Health reported only 36 laboratory-confirmed influenza-related deaths between January and mid-August, to more than 480 at the same time last year.
“The most likely and maximum is social estating,” said Dr Robert Booy, an infectious disease expert at the University of Sydney.
Coronavirus is guilty of approximately 24 million infections and more than 810,000 deaths worldwide in the first 8 months of this year alone. A general year of influenza can lead hospitals around the world to treat several million more serious diseases in addition to the COVID-19 accident. .
In February and March, when the globalization of the new virus had just been recognized, many countries in the southern hemisphere were in a double situation, even when they locked themselves up to fight the coronavirus, made a massive effort to more last-minute influenza. Vaccines.
“We run many more flu shots, like 4 times more,” said Jaco Havenga, a pharmacist who works at Mays Chemist, a pharmacy on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
Locks in some countries have been more effective than in others in stopping the spread of coronavirus So why would the flu have subsided even if COVID-19 was still on the rise?
“Obviously, the surveillance required to succeed against COVID is high,” Redfield said of the CDC. “This virus is one of the most infectious viruses we’ve ever seen. “
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