The number of people who go to the doctor with flu-like symptoms increased slightly last week. But it is still a ‘moderately intense flu epidemic’, according to the weekly bulletin of the health institute Sciensano on Wednesday. ‘The peak may be in sight’, adds virologist Steven Van Gucht.
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In the week from March 28 to April 3, on average, GPs visited 845 people with flu-like symptoms per 100,000 inhabitants. The incidence is therefore very high, but that is because there are also people who are infected with the corona virus. Before corona, the incidence almost exclusively included people who had the flu.
“We know that the number of Covid-19 infections is going down a bit, so the flu is probably still rising a bit,” says Van Gucht. ‘But we see a kink in the increase in all tables, so the peak may be in sight.’ If that is confirmed, it would mean that fears of a severe flu season, after a year without a flu epidemic, have not materialized.
Last year, the spread of the flu was stopped by the corona measures. That was also the case this year for a while, but after those measures were phased out, the flu was still able to break through. As a result, the flu epidemic will fall later than usual this year, because it usually starts in January or February. This time it was around mid-March.
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