World Health Organisation Influenza update
Summary
Influenza activity in temperate southern hemisphere countries continued to decrease or remained low. Influenza activity in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere remained at inter-seasonal levels.
In temperate South America, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) activity decreased throughout the sub-region.
In the temperate countries of Southern Africa, influenza detections continued to decrease.
In Oceania, influenza virus activity continued to decrease in the last few weeks. Influenza A(H3N2) remained the dominant circulating influenza virus. In Australia, activity decreased from the peak in September.
In the Caribbean countries, influenza and other respiratory virus activity remained low except in Cuba where influenza B virus detections continued and in French Guiana where ILI activity and influenza detections of influenza A(H3N2) viruses increased slightly. In Central America, influenza virus activity in most countries remained low, except in Costa Rica where there was a slight increase in influenza detections. RSV continued to circulate in several countries as the predominant respiratory virus.
In tropical South America, respiratory virus activities remained low.
In tropical countries of South Asia, influenza activity was low.
In South East Asia, a decreasing trend in influenza detection was observed, although detections continued to increase in Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) and Thailand
In tropical Africa, Burkina Faso and La Réunion Island (France) reported slightly increased influenza A(H3N2) virus activity.
In Northern temperate Asia, influenza activity remained low with predominantly influenza A(H3N2) detections in northern China.
In North America and Europe, influenza activity was low with few influenza virus detections and ILI levels below seasonal thresholds. In the United States, RSV activity increased.
National Influenza Centres (NICs) and other national influenza laboratories from 82 countries, areas or territories reported data to FluNet for the time period from 03 October 2016 to 16 October 2016 (data as of 2016-10-28 04:04:36 UTC).The WHO GISRS laboratories tested more than 70925 specimens during that time period. 2979 were positive for influenza viruses, of which 2540 (85.3%) were typed as influenza A and 439 (14.7%) as influenza B. Of the sub-typed influenza A viruses, 135 (6.6%) were influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 and 1911 (93.4%) were influenza A(H3N2). Of the characterized B viruses, 21 (25.9%) belonged to the B-Yamagata lineage and 60 (74.1%) to the B-Victoria lineage.
