Influenza bug monitors ready to swing into action

It must be winter because scientists monitoring who gets the flu and which flu they get have swung into action.

The ESR's National Influenza Centre's annual influenza surveillance programme starts this week and will continue for the next 22 weeks.

The programme helps identify influenza "hotspots" and selects vaccine strains.

The process of monitoring flu is organised well beyond conversations about getting bugs that are going around.

About 80 volunteer general practitioners are recruited to participate in the surveillance. They report influenza-like illness and provide specimens to a central agency.

The influenza centre and three hospital laboratories in Auckland, Waikato and Christchurch carry out the strain surveillance through typing and sub-typing of influenza viruses from the respiratory specimens. ESR collates and reports what the surveillance has uncovered nationally.

The reports, which are available on the internet, include weekly consultation rates for influenza-like illness and laboratory-confirmed influenza viruses.

- NZPA