Not a single case of influenza has been detected by public health officials in England for the past seven weeks, with infection rates at historic lows amid the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.
The social restrictions brought in to curb transmission of coronavirus, combined with increased uptake of the flu vaccine, have both been credited with driving down infections.
An alternative possibility to social distancing causing the drop in flu infections:
“Our study shows that during coinfections, one virus can block another simply by being the first to infect the available host cells; there is no need for viral interference through immune response interactions. We use the model to calculate the duration of detectable coinfection and examine how it varies as initial viral dose and time of infection are varied. We find that rhinovirus, the fastest-growing virus, reduces replication of the remaining viruses during a coinfection, while parainfluenza virus, the slowest-growing virus is suppressed in the presence of other viruses.”
