Royal Australian College of GPs Media Release
GPs are sounding the alarm on Australia’s influenza vaccination rates, following a record flu season in which more than 410,000 lab-confirmed cases have been reported so far in 2025.
The startling case numbers have already outstripped the previous all-time high of 365,000, recorded last year, with Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) President Dr Michael Wright describing the latest figures as a wake-up call.
“This is not a record we want to be breaking, we must boost vaccination rates and reverse this trend,” he said.
“Getting vaccinated not only help keeps yourself as safe as possible, but also your friends and family members. This should act as a wake-up call to all patients across Australia.”
While influenza case numbers are soaring, flu vaccination rates have plateaued or are trending in the opposite direction:
- Only 25.7% of children aged six months to five years were vaccinated in 2025, the lowest since 2021
- Rates for patients over the age of 65 have also slipped, with the 60.5% rate the lowest since 2020
The stalled vaccination rates have led Dr Wright to call for action ahead of next year’s peak flu season.
“Governments can take concrete steps to improve our vaccination figures,” he said.
“Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia have committed to introducing free childhood intranasal vaccinations ahead of the 2026 flu season and we would like to see other states and territories do the same. Needle-free vaccinations make such a difference.
“The vaccination rate for young children, who are at increased risk of contracting a severe flu infection, has fallen to just one in four and they’re also coming down with influenza more often than any other patient group.
“Many kids are fearful of needles, which can stall vaccination efforts – particularly as two thirds of parents say the distress they feel when thinking about vaccinating their child acts as a barrier.
“That’s why needle-free vaccinations are a game changer. I can’t imagine a more effective and timely way to boost vaccinations for these kids.
“The intranasal sprays have been thoroughly tested for safety and efficacy overseas. Finland, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain having been administering them for years and these countries have seen substantialincreases in vaccination coverage in high-risk patient groups.
“We must fight complacency and get more jabs in arms to help keep as many patients as possible out of hospital and ensure that next year’s flu case number figures are heading in the right direction.”
Key influenza stats:
- 2025 is the worst year on record for influenza adjusted for population, with around 1.5% of people experiencing a notifiable flu infection, or 1525 lab-confirmed cases per 100,000 people – a 10.8% increase on the 2024 record
- More than 44,500 infections were among children under five, a disproportionately high 10.9% of all cases, while more than one in three cases were recorded among children younger than 15
- Cases continue to climb, with over 13,000 lab-confirmed cases this month as of 15 October, almost double the 7201 figures in October 2024, according to the National the Notifiable Disease Surveillance System
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“,,more than 410,000 lab-confirmed cases have been reported so far in 2025.,,”
So what? 410,000 sniffy noses and the only beneficiaries are the usual purveyors of injectable snake oil and Kimberley Clark who manufacture Kleenex tissues.
Influenza can be lethal, Mediocrates. Must I remind you of the pandemic shortly after the end of WWI?
Was gonna comment on Mediocrates offering; didn’t, now leefe’s jumped in, relevantly, and so… as I was going to mention before I didn’t; I caught the flu back in 1979, close to fifty years ago at a time of life when I was young, strong, healthy etc., … it nearly killed me… never been sicker than that in my life, before or since.
WHO estimates peg annual global deaths around between 290,000 and 650,000 due to this disease.
It’s not a matter of sniffy noses and tissues sales.
Canguro:
I’ve never been that sick with it, but it changed the whole course of my mother’s life – that pandemic orphaned her at the ripe old age of 14 months.
leefe, here you go again, anything “can be lethal”, so are you suggesting we ban anything?
The more chemicals we pour down our throats or inject into our arms the weaker our immune systems will become.
A good diet, lots of rest and personnel hygiene will ward off off most common conditions, can I suggest you move to America, Trump and his team will look after you. I believe they have banned immunisation over there?
jonangel:
A lot of people are immunocompromised, for various reasons, so diet, rest and hygiene are not enough. Vaccines are also assistants to our immune systems, not replacements for them – they teach those immune systems to recognise harmful agents; they effectively strengthen rather than weaken our natural systerms.
I was not suggesting bans or anything of that nature, I was simply pointing out that many millions of people have died from influenza and that it is not just a mild case of the sniffles. If I didn’t personally react so badly to flu vaccines, I’d have been getting those shots along with the regular Covid boosters.
Why would I want to move somewhere they’re removing vaccine mandates and trying to drag the nation back to the Dark Ages? Totally illogical comment. If you really think “diet, rest and hygiene” are sufficient to avoid most illnesses, you are the one who should be moving to USAnia; maybe you can get a job assisting RFK Jr in his demolition of scientific medicine in that country.
jonangel, if you lived in a region that still had active poliomyelitis virus in play, and you were offered the vaccine, would you accept? Yes or no?
The same, hypothetically, for Smallpox, or for that matter, Hepatitis A, B, & D, Tetanus, Measles, Whooping Cough or Ebola as a small selection of diseases preventable via vaccination. These are all nasty diseases, some of them almost invariably fatal.
Where do you stand in relation to the possibility of vaccination and thus safeguarding, or contracting the disease and possibly dying or being damaged ever after?
Your comments so far appear to place you in that quarter of humanity who are anti-rational, in denial of objective science, in reliance of witches’ brews, folkloric superstitious dogma and so on. Being wilfully ignorant isn’t a crime but it does raise deep concerns about one’s capacity to align with best practice behaviour. We might even call it the Dezi Freeman syndrome.