Dr. Andrzej Jarynowski, an epidemiologist at the Wrocław Medical University in the southwest of the country, said the toughest early test is expected to be the flu season, which could hit harder than average and unevenly across the nation.
That pattern, he said, may translate into local shortages of medicines, even without a single nationwide peak.
The university said its 2026 outlook was prepared against the backdrop of a rapidly changing environment, including a warming climate, an aging population, migration and growing mobility of people and goods.
The aim, it said, was to point to trends already affecting public health that could intensify in the coming year.
Jarynowski, a specialist in infectious disease modelling, argued that 2025 showed how quickly emotion can outrun facts.
He pointed to waves of alarmist reports, starting with panic around human metapneumovirus in China, followed by claims about “new deadly flu variants” and even reports of allegedly confirmed cholera.
At the same time, the university noted, real issues, such as animal diseases near Poland’s borders and the return of infections not seen for years, required calm, technical work by public services.
Medical disinformation
Across these risks, Jarynowski singled out medical disinformation as a threat that can magnify every other problem.
False alarms, sensational headlines, and conspiracy theories, he said, erode trust in experts and institutions. "We can have the best vaccines and procedures, but if people do not believe in them, the system stops working," he said.
"2025 taught us that an information crisis can be more dangerous than the pathogen itself," Jarynowski said. "If messages are inconsistent or exaggerated, people stop trusting the true ones as well."
The university said the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 remains in circulation, but its role has changed. It described the autumn 2025 COVID-19 wave as predictable and short-lived, adding that current variants no longer dominate over other seasonal infections.
Jarynowski said he was more concerned by reports of further cases of MERS in Europe, a severe respiratory illness known as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and by research aimed at modifying viruses.
“Technology, including artificial intelligence, makes creating new variants easier than before,” he said, adding that this calls for international oversight and responsibility.
Jarynowski said late January and early February may be especially difficult, as high sickness absence affects both schools and workplaces. Around the same time, or soon after, he said infections with RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, could peak, particularly among infants.
He noted that diagnoses have been rising in recent years, partly because testing has improved.
“We have an effective tool to protect the youngest: free vaccination for pregnant women, who pass antibodies to the child,” he said. “It is cost-effective and safe, and still not promoted enough.”
He added that the beginning of 2026 is the last moment to make up for gaps from the previous season.
The university also warned that cases of hepatitis A, a viral liver infection, have been rising in Central Europe, with a particularly dynamic situation in the Czech Republic. That, it said, matters for Poles traveling during the winter school holiday period.
Individual risk remains low, Jarynowski said, but crowded settings such as mountain hostels and food outlets make basic hand hygiene especially important. He said there is no reason to cancel trips, but frequent travelers may want to consider vaccination.
Health risks from climate change, STIs
The forecast also highlighted health impacts tied to climate change. A longer tick season, the university said, means more cases of Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis, and new tick species are appearing in places where they were not previously found.
Warmer waters, it added, raise the risk of infections caused by Vibrio bacteria, while stagnant, heated water can fuel blooms of toxic cyanobacteria. “Diseases we recently associated with southern Europe are becoming our problem too,” Jarynowski said.
The university said it is also concerned by a steady rise in sexually transmitted infections (STIs), increasingly seen outside major cities.
According to a December 2025 report by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, this reflects a broader trend of a rise in STIs across the EU and the European Economic Area.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP