Flu season started in March, confirms NICD

CAPE TOWN - The National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) confirmed that flu season started on 24 March with patients being admitted for pneumonia.

The NICD reported that, historically, this year's flu season arrived earlier than past seasons.

Health officials advised the public to wash their hands regularly, cover coughs and sneezes and to avoid contact with people at risk of respiratory illnesses.  

Western Cape Health Department COO, Saadiq Kariem, said that transmission of the flu was currently low.  

"And so they do monitory of all the flu variants and what they found so far in fact since the 30th of December 2024 to the first of June 2025, of the samples tested, they found that there were 9.5% of cases were influenza but they also do monitoring of other respiratory pathogens and so they found that 16% of those cases were in fact RSV or respiratory syncytial virus and 3.5% of those cases were in fact from SARS CoV2."

Kariem added that regular vaccinations provided a defence against the virus.

"But this is why it's important to vaccinate every year, because the variants change all the time, much like we’ve obviously people understand how the SARSCoV2 virus has changed all the time."

He detailed the types of influenza variants that had been detected this winter season.

"So the flu virus changes all the time, every season, and most of the cases this far are from influenza A and the subtype is H3N2, but the NICD also picked up influenza A, H1N1 and a small amount of cases have been influenza B."