Reports of fever and cough symptoms have climbed to their highest levels so far this year, but remain in line with previous years' figures. The FluTracking survey, run by PHF Science - formerly known as ESR - is an online self-reporting respiratory illness surveillance system.
It asks participants to respond for themselves and household members across New Zealand, in an effort to capture how widespread flu-like symptoms may be. Since mid-July the proportion of survey participants has sharply increased from 0.8 percent to 2.1 percent. That suggests more than 100,000 New Zealanders are currently out there with fever and cough symptoms. Another winter illness tracking tool - the Healthline Influenza-like Illness activity dashboard reports calls to Healthline continue to increase, and that influenza B appears to be the prevalent virus currently circulating.
Peter McIntrye is a Professor at Otago University and head of the Paediatrics and Child Health department in Dunedin. He has a specialist interest in disease and immunisation coverage registers, and vaccine preventable illnesses.
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