Very little influenza in the WHO European Region during the 2020/21 season, weeks40 2020 to 8 2021

Abstract

Between weeks40 2020 and 8 2021, the World Health Organization European Region experienced a 99.8% reduction in sentinel influenza virus positive detec-tions (33/25,606 tested; 0.1%) relative to an average of 14,966/39,407 (38.0%; p<0.001) over the same time in the previous six seasons. COVID-19 pandemic public health and physical distancing measures may have extinguished the 2020/21 European seasonal influenza epidemic with just a few sporadic detections of all viral subtypes. This might possibly continue dur-ing the remainder of the influenza season. We study features of influenza epidemiology in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region from week40 2020 to week8 2021, a period when in usual seasons the highest influenza activity (peak of seasonal epidemic) would be expected. Results are compared to those of the previous six seasons (2014/15-2019/20).