Flu rates highest ever recorded
23rd October 2014
This year has seen the nation’s highest ever recorded number of lab-confirmed flu notifications, outstripping the height of Australia’s swine flu pandemic in 2009.
As of 13 October, there had been 62,390 notifications of laboratory-confirmed influenza across the country — the highest since a revised national surveillance case definition for the condition was implemented in 2008, when there were 9175 cases.
The notifications also exceeded the 59,028 made in 2009 — the year of the H1N1 outbreak.
Virologist and chairman of the Influenza Specialist Group Dr Alan Hampson