Agnieszka Mastalerz-Migas, national consultant in family medicine and head of the Polish Society of Family Medicine, expects the peak of infections in Poland to arrive shortly after Christmas.
She told journalists that flu is likely to intensify in January and February.
According to the latest Report on Infectious Diseases from the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate, more than 2,000,000 people in Poland were vaccinated against flu by the end of November in the 2025/26 season. The precise figure is 2,000,744, which is over 200,000 more than during the entire previous flu season in 2024/25.
Agata Kubel-Grabau from the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate’s Department of Health Promotion and Social Communication said that uptake has increased across all age groups. She noted that, as in previous years, most vaccinations are in the 65–79 age group. The Chief Sanitary Inspectorate is Poland’s main public health authority and monitors infectious diseases nationwide.
The new report points to a steady rise in interest in flu shots over the past three seasons. In 2024/25, a total of 1,805,518 people received the vaccine. In 2023/24, the figure was 1,646,832.
As in the two previous seasons, most Poles who chose to be vaccinated this time did so between September and November. In earlier years, the pace of vaccination slowed sharply in December and January. In December 2024, just over 67,000 people received the flu shot, while in January 2025 around 105,000 were vaccinated.
At the same time, epidemiologists are preparing for an earlier than normal flu peak in Europe. The current flu season covers autumn 2025 to spring 2026, and this year a rapid rise in infections has already been seen in Western and Northern Europe, including the United Kingdom and Norway.
Iwona Paradowska-Stankiewicz, the national consultant in epidemiology and head of the Epidemiology and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Unit at the National Institute of Public Health – National Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw, said that the situation is changing quickly.
She told reporters that in the last two weeks there had been a doubling of flu incidence in Western Europe and an epidemic-level increase in cases, around four weeks earlier than in countries such as Spain. She added that Poland should expect a growing number of infections in the near future.
In the 2024/25 season, flu cases in Poland began to climb at the start of January 2025, with the peak arriving in February and March. For now, the level of infections is similar to the same period a year earlier, but specialists believe this will change as winter progresses.
Experts continue to encourage people, especially older adults and those with chronic conditions, to get vaccinated. They remind the public that full protection develops about two weeks after the flu shot.
(rt)
Source: IAR, PAP