in the Southern Hemisphere—where winter began to descend nearly two months ago—the annual influx of flu and respiratory virus patients "never came," the Wall Street Journal's David Luhnow and Alice Uribe report.
According to Luhnow and Uribe, Chile has recorded 1,134 seasonal respiratory infections so far this year, compared with 20,949 such infections during over the same time period last year. And in the first two weeks of July, which typically is the height of flu season in the Southern Hemisphere, Chile reported no new cases of the flu.
Similarly, in Brazil, even though the country has seen a large number of coronavirus-related deaths, officials reported 2,085 hospitalized flu patients in week 27 of the country's flu season, which is down significantly from the 3,445 hospitalized flu patients the country reported during the same week last year.
The number of lab-confirmed cases of the flu also plummeted by 64% in Argentina, Luhnow and Uribe report, dropping from 420,737 between January and June of 2019 to 151,189 cases in the same time frame this year.