With flu cases rising and resident doctors on strike from Wednesday, the NHS is under considerable pressure. But experts say lessons from the Covid pandemic could help ease the situation.
A trio of UK-based academics say a three-pronged approach of increasing uptake of flu vaccines, boosting support so people can stay home when unwell, and increasing ventilation and air quality would help to protect people from influenza.
“Many of the lessons we learned during the Covid pandemic about what needs to be done to ease the spread of infection still apply, although we are consistently failing to follow them,” they write in the BMJ.
If such measures are not taken, they add, “people will continue to get sick and die while schools close and hospitals are overwhelmed”.
The NHS is expecting to face one of the worst winters yet, with the flu season having started several weeks earlier than usual. In some countries, including the UK, a new strain of the virus is dominating, which is thought to help it spread faster.
However, Prof Stephen Reicher, an expert in social psychology at the University of St Andrews and co-author of the article, said the situation was not a surprise.
“People talk about the ‘super flu’, which is not a medical term and in a sense it’s more an excuse than an explanation,” he said. “Respiratory diseases happen every year, and the lessons we had from Covid about how to deal with them in the longer term just haven’t been taken onboard.”
Reicher and his co-authors – Prof Martin McKee, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and Prof Stephen Griffin, of the University of Leeds – say that among the measures needed are an increased eligibility for free flu vaccines, engagement with those who are hesitant to have a vaccine, and a wider availability of the vaccines – for example, making them accessible in schools and workplaces.
The team also stress the importance of supporting people to isolate when unwell, noting that in Germany workers receive 100% of their salary for eight weeks, “while UK statutory sick pay was under £100 a week, and nothing for the first three days”. Even with the new employment rights bill, now in parliament, they write, “most people with Covid or flu must still work to survive and, for them, isolation remains more an aspiration than a practical prospect”.
The trio add ventilation and good airflow are also important to prevent the transmission of Covid – and flu. Reicher said that as well as protecting people’s health and preventing them needing time off work, better ventilation had been shown to improve decision-making and productivity.
“There’s a short-termism of politics whereby people aren’t prepared to do things which bring a benefit in a number of years’ time when they might not be in power. They do things simply in the short term,” he said. “But we need a longer-term perspective. And if we did, then we would be able to deal with these generic problems which happen time and time again.”
Reicher said that rather than hectoring the public on how to behave, the government should create a sense of partnership.
And with the festive season in full swing, he said a sense of communal responsibility mattered.
“The last thing you would want to give to a relative as a Christmas present, especially an elderly or vulnerable relative, is the flu.”
