Health leaders are warning that up to 8,000 people could be taken to hospital before a flu wave currently gripping the country reaches its peak.
A new strain of the flu virus is believed to be much more infectious than previous strains and has already led to a record number of patients needing urgent hospital care.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said it is seeing the flu among younger patients and fears the virus will now spread to older, more vulnerable patients.
Dr Jamie Lopez Berbnal, consultant epidemiologist at the UKHSA, told Sky News: “The new strain circulating has evolved a bit more rapidly than normal.
“And that could mean that there’s a bit less immunity in the population from what we normally see in a flu season.
“And that could mean that the flu virus spreads a bit more than usual. And that’s something that we’ve started to see already, in particular in children and young adults.
“But we’re now starting to see flu take out a bit more in older adults, who tend to be more vulnerable to flu as well.”
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Why is flu season worse this year?
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More than 17 million flu jabs have been administered in England so far. But that’s not enough.
Flu season has come early and hit harder. A mutated, stronger strain of the virus is driving this wave and the peak is nowhere in sight.
The NHS said that unlike a cold, flu symptoms can come on very quickly and can include a sudden high temperature that appears within a few hours.
With a cold, a high temperature would appear gradually.
Flu can cause a headache, dry cough and aching body – while a cold mainly affects your nose and throat.
And flu can leave you feeling too exhausted to carry on as normal – unlike a cold, which leaves you feeling tired. In children, flu symptoms can include an earache and a drop in energy.
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Professor Julian Redhead, national director for urgent care for NHS England, said this flu season would be a “big challenge” for the health service.
“I think it’s going to be a big challenge for us as we go forward because it just increases the pressure.
“I mean, at the moment we’ve got around, say 1,500, maybe 2,000 patients in hospital with flu and the predictions are that it will rise to somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000.
“So you can see the pressure that will be put on the system will be very large and that’s why we’re concerned.”
Professor Redhead also warned people not to underestimate the virus. Even for normally healthy people the effects of flu could be quite serious.
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He said: “Anyone can be at risk of severe flu and it does carry complications, which people won’t necessarily recognise because it can affect the heart and lungs and things like this.
“Clearly, it’s the most vulnerable population that we’re really worried about and what happens for them, is they can get bacterial infections on top of the flu and end up with things like pneumonia, which can be really, really serious.
“And we see patients going into ITU in these circumstances every year and that puts pressure into the ITU systems as well.
“So yes, it can be dangerous. It is mainly the very old and very young, where we see the complications.
“But remember that the increase at the moment is very much in the younger population and the danger is it then transmits into the older, more vulnerable population and that’s what we want to try to prevent.”
