Data shows almost half of people with flu-like symptoms miss work or school

UKHSA has published insights from FluSurvey, which highlight the wider impact of flu-like illness on people’s daily lives.

The findings show that most participants reported that their illness disrupted their daily life with the majority treating their symptoms at home, while 14% sought help from their GP or a healthcare service.  

Among those in work or in education, 47% reported missing work or school due to their symptoms and the majority reported taking medication, most commonly painkillers, to manage their illness. 

Ensuring school children are vaccinated as early in the season as possible is key, not only to protect them, but to help stop the spread into the wider community and those at greater risk of more severe illness, like grandparents and younger siblings. Giving children protection through vaccination also means that parents are less likely to have to take time off work to care for sick children. 

Dr Becki Green, Principal Scientist for Respiratory Viruses at UKHSA, said: 

These findings show the big impact that flu-like illnesses can have on people’s daily lives and while most rightly treat their symptoms at home, almost half missed work or school, needing time to recover. This is why getting your flu vaccine is so important, not just to protect against serious illness, but to reduce the wider disruption flu causes every year on workplaces, the economy and education.

FluSurvey, the UK’s longest-running participatory surveillance system, relies on members of the public voluntarily reporting their symptoms each week, providing valuable insight into illness circulating in the community that would otherwise go unseen by healthcare-based surveillance systems.