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. 2021 Jun 23;39(28):3645-3648.
doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.05.049. Epub 2021 May 30.

The missing season: The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on influenza

Casey M Zipfel  1 , Vittoria Colizza  2 , Shweta Bansal  3
Affiliations

The missing season: The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on influenza

Casey M Zipfel et al. Vaccine. .

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many have worried that the additional burden of seasonal influenza would create a devastating scenario, resulting in overwhelmed healthcare capacities and further loss of life. However, many were pleasantly surprised: the 2020 Southern Hemisphere and 2020-2021 Northern Hemisphere influenza seasons were entirely suppressed. The potential causes and impacts of this drastic public health shift are highly uncertain, but provide lessons about future control of respiratory diseases, especially for the upcoming influenza season.

Keywords: Australia; Behavior; COVID-19; Europe; Influenza; Nonpharmaceutical intervention; United States; Vaccination.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Australia (green), France (orange), and the US (blue) implemented different behavioral interventions with different levels of adherence during the timeframe of their typical influenza seasons. A) Mobility data collected by Google, based on Google application-based location services that shows how location visits differ compared to a pre-pandemic baseline , demonstrates that Australia and France had a high percent reduction in mobility to retail and recreation locations, compared to the baseline, while the US showed a more modest reduction in the same mobility, during April-June 2020 for Australia and November- mid-December 2020 for France and the US, capturing the start of their respective influenza seasons. B) A social media survey of Facebook users across over 200 countries starting in 2020 demonstrated that approximately half of US respondents with school-aged children were participating in no in-person schooling from November 1-mid-December 2020 . Australia and France did not have widespread school closures at the start of their influenza seasons. C) The Facebook survey also demonstrated that France and the US had high levels of mask-wearing during November 1-mid-December 2020. Australia had much lower mask-wearing uptake at the start of the influenza season in April-June 2020. Adherence to protective behaviors was spatially heterogeneous across the US as measured by (D) Google mobility data showing the percent reduction in mobility to retail and recreation locations from November-mid-December 2020; (E) the Facebook survey data showing that reports of no in-person schooling; and (F) the Facebook data showing reports of wearing a mask “always” or “most of the time”. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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