Primary Health Care report could have doctors sniffing. Photo:
Cough, cough, splutter, splutter. That’s not just the sound of your sniffling colleagues bringing their annual case of the flu to work.
It is also the sound doctors may have made last week if they read an investor update from Primary Health Care that blamed a fall in patient visits in April, May and June on “a relatively mild cold and flu season compared to the prior period.”
It seems the opposite is true.
Sneeze.
“We’re seeing a lot of reports of laboratory-confirmed influenza. Far more than we’ve seen in the past,” says Professor Alan Hampson, a virologist of 50 years who chairs the Influenza Specialist Group, which works to prevent the virus.
Data provided to Fairfax Media by the Department of Health shows the number of flu cases confirmed by pathology labs in the three months more than doubled to 9594, from 4591 the previous year.
Doctors and scientists have noticed the flu taking hold much earlier than usual in 2015, Hampson says.
The trend has played out in general practice clinics, the Australian Medical Association GP chair Dr Brian Morton says. “[The peak] is usually mid to late winter and sometimes into early spring,” he says.
Last year was a particularly rough season, with a spike that delivered a whopping 7349 cases in one August week, and Morton says 2015 may continue towards that peak.
An increase in nasal and throat swab tests by doctors might explain some of the higher incidence, but not all, Hampson says. “The last two years by the time we have got to June and July [cases have been] up 50 per cent year on year. I doubt that there’s that much extra testing. We’ve also seen an increased background level of flu that has been persisting through summer.”
The virus is unpredictable and it is unclear what is driving the earlier, higher incidence in 2015, but one quirk of the season is that the stock of flu vaccines arrived late from the manufacturers. The delay was caused by an unusual mutation that required two strain changes from the 2014 vaccine.
Primary, a $2.5 billion provider of pathology, imaging and medical centres, also blamed its drop in visits on extreme weather in NSW, which Morton says is consistent with the often discretionary nature of going to the doctor.
A Primary spokesman pointed to the department’s latest influenza surveillance report, which contains one graph that shows presentations of people with “influenza-like illnesses” at GPs. Looking at the fourth quarter of 2014-15, the period blamed for softer volumes that led to Primary’s earnings downgrade, the measure is tracking below last year for the first six weeks, but coming in line for the last six. The same report showed fever and cough in the community at similar levels to last year, as well as a higher rate of confirmed flu cases.
This week Primary rival Sonic Healthcare revealed an earnings downgrade too. It blamed fewer tests in its pathology business (which can be linked to GP visits) and a worse than expected effect of pathology funding cuts.
One analyst, who declined to be named, says blaming softer volumes on the flu season gives the impression of a one-off item that shouldn’t be taken into account for forecasts. But, he says, there may be broader, more permanent trends driving Primary and Sonic’s earnings down.