Current virus deemed ‘super flu’ as it takes over holiday season

The NHS remains on high alert over flu, health bosses say, even though there are clear signs the surge in the virus has declined, for now at least.

Community spread appears to have stabilised, the UK Health Security Agency says, while the rise in hospital cases has also slowed.

And with just over 3,000 patients in hospital in England with the virus, the dire prediction by NHS chief executive Sir Jim Mackay of "between 5,000 and 8,000" cases has not materialised.

The major difference between the 2025 flu season and the last three years is that the virus started spreading a few weeks earlier than normal.

When someone goes to their general physician or hospital with flu-like symptoms, they can be swabbed and tested for influenza, Covid, RSV and other viruses.

UKHSA then records the percentage of those tests that come back positive for flu and the figures had been rising quickly over the autumn and at the start of winter.

But last week the spread of the virus appears to have stabilised at a medium level, UKHSA says.

It is too early to say whether this marks the start of the peak as flu is unpredictable, a lull can be followed by another surge.

The name 'super-flu' has been used by the NHS to describe this latest outbreak.

But that is not a medical term, and it does not mean the virus itself has suddenly become more dangerous or harder to treat.

"It is misleading and a bit frightening to call it super flu; it's just a flu variant that is clearly a little bit more infectious than normal," says Prof Lawrence Young, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick.

"What we're seeing is a flu season that's perhaps two to three weeks earlier than normal,” he assured over the spread of flu.