COVID-19, Flu, RSV, Norovirus, H5N1 Avian Flu and Other Virus and Health UK and World News Update 12th December 2025
Shall we start with the huge elephant sitting in the centre of the room? My genuine commiserations to anyone who has flu right now...
By crikey UK flu is making the news worldwide. It's not good, but ignore anything with three exclamation marks!!! and sit yourself down (preferably beside an open window)...
Better than the headlines suggest:
- Some schools are closed to create a firebreak and stem transmissions, and in some cases for a deep clean. This happens, it just doesn’t often make the national news.
- The rates in England at 1,717 patients in a hospital bed each day 2 weeks ago (including 69 in critical care) are a massive 7 times as high as the same point in 2023 (average 243 flu patients a day), but actually only 1.6 times as high as the same week last year (2024 average 1,098 and 39 in critical care). It's bad, but 2023 was a low year, so not a fair comparison.
- Flu arrived early, and although it's at record-breaking and eye-watering levels FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR, with doubling and tripling of hospitalisations week on week, so far it's actually tracking a pretty normal pattern (albeit a month early). Even the UK HSA bulletin says "medium levels". Obviously medical bosses try to plan ahead, so staffing levels and 'free' beds, planned procedures, etc are out of sync, causing extra pressure.
- As I've previously reported, the human Flu A(H3N2) which we were expecting has mutated or 'drifted' into 'Variant K', which is likely to creep past existing immunity for more people, and means our vaccination isn’t a perfect match. An 'H3N2 year' does tend to create more cases and we've not had one for a couple of years, so immunity is waning a bit, but it is NOT a new flu.
- We could see more people ill and therefore more people hospitalised, but all evidence suggests Variant K A(H3N2) is NOT more severe or more deadly. Folk aren't dropping like flies, this is NOT an horrendously deadly new superflu.
Honest headlines:
- Australia and some Asian countries had a very long flu season, so while hospitals were not necessarily overwhelmed, numbers for the whole season were much higher (2 weeks ago Australia were still recording confirmed cases, with 441,000 at that point, compared to 363,000 in 2024 and 289,000 in 2023). The long season could be partly because Variant K arrived and kept it going for longer, maybe...
- We are still seeing large number of schoolchildren with flu in the UK, while infections are spreading through older populations, so our 'wave' could be moving more slowly, but only time will answer that.
- On Tuesday Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford declared critical incidents due to sustained high demand, including flu patients.
On Wednesday a critical incident was declared at 4 more West Midlands hospitals - Good Hope, Heartlands and Queen Elizabeth hospitals in Birmingham, and Solihull Hospital - due to "exceptional" numbers of flu patients.
This is not new. It's demoralising and it's not good, but it’s not unusual when flu levels are high.
- Latest figures for flu patients in hospital, hospital visits, ambulance requests, GP visits, flu tests are all somewhat obviously, and somewhat normally, soaring. Last week an average 2,660 people were in hospital with flu in England alone every day. Public Health Scotland say the situation isn’t quite as bad, however they had an average 986 flu hospital admissions this week.
My twopenneth:
- It is too early to say if flu will keep rising, carry on for weeks, or just peak and tail off. At this point no-one can declare this an exceptionally bad year, especially not an AI writing clickbait headlines for a national newspaper. That said, it's not started well, so the potential exists.
- Call me a cynic, and we never want to overwhelm the NHS, but the Government want to stop the resident doctor's strikes. A lot of these headlines are dramatic and scary, they make people feel worried, and it works in the Government's favour.
