Director of health for Banbury area urges people to get flu vaccine this winter

Ansaf Azhar addressed the county’s Health Improvement Partnership board with a health protection update this week.

He said the absence of Covid restrictions, which had also helped to quell flu over the past two winters, would contribute to pressure on the NHS and that “we have certainly seen evidence” of a flu “surge” in other parts of the world.

“We keep an eye on what is happening in the rest of the world and often we keep an eye on Australia where there has been a significant surge in flu,” he said.

“The expectation is that we will see a surge in flu over here as well, particularly as we haven’t been hit by flu over the past couple of years and the immunity will have worn off.

“In some ways, I am actually more concerned about the impact of flu. Vaccinations against flu are on offer, please go and get your vaccination. This is the time to do it before we see an uptick in case rates, protect yourselves, your families and vulnerable groups.

“We are at that point, the end of September going into the autumn season where we see respiratory illnesses going up. We are not going to see measures being introduced to curtail that, we can’t be doing that so it is really important to take the protective measures that are offered to us.”