After reaching peak in mid-March, the seasonal influenza still remains at high overall levels across China with a few provinces passing an inflection point with cases declining, the Chinese National Influenza Center (CNIC) said.
Statistics from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) show that 53.2 percent people examined at sentinel hospitals with cold symptoms testing positive for the pathogen during the 10th week of 2023, much higher than the 0.7 percent in the fifth week.
Wang Dayan, the director of the CNIC, said on Monday that influenza activities began to increase in early February, and the rising momentum became apparent after the end of February with the transmission of the influenza virus nationwide entering its peak in mid-March, the Beijing Daily reported.
Although the level of influenza activity currently remains at a high level, China CDC has also detected an inflection point, which represents declining of the virus in a number of provinces, Wang said.
According to Wang, the flu season this year was about two months later than previous years with influenza A (H1N1) as the dominant virus followed by influenza A (H3N2).
The latest data from China CDC shows that flu positivity rates at hospitals monitored in the week ending March 12 climbed to 53.2 percent, much higher than a month earlier, which is different from the usual situation that flu spreads in winters rather than in springs.
In terms of viral prevalence, China’s flu season usually starts around the end of November, peaks in January and lasts until March, according to Wang.
However, due to the COVID-19 epidemic spiking in last December and this January, prevention and control measures against coronavirus were also effective in guarding against seasonal flu and other respiratory viruses to some degree, Wang said.