In the current epidemiological season, Ukraine may face a twin-epidemic (simultaneous epidemics) of COVID-19 and influenza, Fedor Lapiy, head of the National Technical Expert Group on Immunoprophylaxis (NTEGI), predicts.
“There is reason to believe that this season’s flu will return to us, and we will meet with the so-called twindemic, that is, simultaneous epidemics of COVID-19 and influenza,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Lapiy explained that a prerequisite for a twindemic now could be the fact that the flu was previously contained due to quarantine measures in force in Ukraine before the Russian military invasion to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Over the past two years, the measures that were taken to prevent COVID-19: masks, quarantine measures, distance learning, etc., also contained the flu very well. Therefore, we have influenza in the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 seasons in fact, there wasn’t, but his virus didn’t disappear anywhere. A non-immune layer has accumulated that will contribute to the flu epidemic. It is absolutely obvious that the tweendemia scenario can now be realized,” he said.
Lapiy noted that if a person is ill with these two diseases at the same time, this significantly worsens the prognosis, and the risk of death doubles.
