Recent figures from the crowd-sourced FluTracking public health surveillance system show how the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected the 2020 flu season, with the number of laboratory confirmed cases of flu in January 2021 just one per cent of those seen in January 2020.

Developed by Hunter New England Health and the University of Newcastle, FluTracking started in 2006 with 400 participants but by 2020, Australians and New Zealanders providing weekly data peaked at more than 150,000.