STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Europe’s flu season normally begins in earnest in December and peaks around the turn of the year. This year, public health officials say, it may not wait that long.
In a risk assessment published Friday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said an influenza A (H3N2) strain had been detected in community samples in Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and Austria during the first week of October — roughly five weeks earlier than the agency would expect. The same strain drove an unusually early and severe winter in the Southern Hemisphere, where hospital admissions for flu in Australia were about 15 percent above the five-year average and peaked three weeks ahead of schedule.
“The Southern Hemisphere is our weather forecast,” said Marit Eklund, the agency’s head of respiratory virus surveillance. “It is not always right. This year it is telling us to prepare early, and what we are seeing in our own sentinel data is consistent with that.”
H3N2 seasons tend to hit older adults hardest, and the agency is urging member states to begin vaccination campaigns immediately rather than in late October or November, when many are scheduled to start. Uptake among people over 65 across the E.U. was 52 percent last winter, well short of the World Health Organization’s 75 percent target. The Netherlands reached 68 percent; Germany, 43 percent.
There is also a question of fit. The vaccine formulation for this winter was chosen in February, and the H3N2 strain now circulating has drifted slightly since then. Dr. Eklund said early laboratory data suggested the vaccine would still offer “meaningful protection against severe disease,” though perhaps less against infection itself.
Hospitals are taking the warning seriously. At the Hospital Clínico Universitario de Valladolid, in northern Spain, the head of emergency medicine, Álvaro Peñaranda, said his department had moved its winter staffing plan forward by a month and set aside 24 additional beds. “Last year we had our worst week in the first week of January,” he said. “If that comes in the first week of December, it collides with everything else. We would rather look foolish for being early.”
The agency also noted that respiratory syncytial virus, which affects infants and the elderly, is tracking a normal timeline so far, and that Covid-19 activity remains low. Officials hope to avoid the simultaneous waves that strained hospitals in the winter of 2022.
“The single most useful thing anyone over 65 can do this weekend,” Dr. Eklund said, “is book an appointment.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 11, 2026, Section A, Page 6 of the European edition with the headline: After an Early Southern Winter, Europe’s Hospitals Brace for Flu to Arrive Ahead of Schedule.
