According to observations made in the southern hemisphere, which has already seen the winter pass, the seasonal flu epidemic could be smaller this year.
This could be a consequence of the application of barrier gestures such as wearing a mask or washing hands.
Next week begins the vaccination campaign against the seasonal flu, a virus that kills around 10,000 people in France each year.
This time around, the epidemic could be much smaller.
Each year, to find out what the flu economy might look like here, experts look at what happened six months earlier in the southern hemisphere as the seasons are reversed.
This year, the figures are unusual, the flu has indeed infected far fewer patients in Latin America, South Africa or Australia.
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The effectiveness of the mask and hand washing
In Australia, "there were up to 30% of samples that were positive while this year, it is almost less than 1%", explains Professor Yazdan Yazdanpanah, head of the infectious diseases department at Bichat hospital.
The peak of contamination this winter is not at all the same height as that of the last five years: "It is quite logical to think that we will have a much less serious flu epidemic this year. It is not not the strain that changes, these are really the measures that have been put in place. "
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The data suggests that wearing a mask and washing our hands also protects us from the flu, which is half as contagious as Covid-19.
But this is not a reason to ignore influenza vaccination, insists the infectious disease specialist, because the two viruses will coexist this winter and fragile people must at all costs avoid a double infection.