Australian GPs are sounding the alarm over a record-breaking flu season they attribute in part to a rise in anti-vaccination sentiment, fuelled by social media and, they say, the White House.
This ideological wave, which gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, has contributed to a drop in flu vaccinations across almost all age groups, even as confirmed flu cases have soared past previous all-time highs.
Dr Rebekah Hoffman at her practice.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong
There have been more than 410,000 confirmed cases of the flu across the country in 2025 so far – more than the previous all-time high of 365,000 in 2024 – and about 1.5 per cent of the population.
It comes as flu vaccination rates decline across almost all age groups, with doctors particularly concerned for the vulnerable six-month to five-year-old cohort and the 65-plus group, with only 25.7 per cent and 60 per cent having received the vaccine respectively.
“This is not the record we want to be breaking, we must boost vaccinations rates and reverse this trend,” said Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) president Dr Michael Wright.
Dr Rebekah Hoffman, a GP and chair of the RACGP, said decreasing vaccinations rates was partly because of a rising number of vaccine sceptics.
“I think there’s cohorts of people that [are on] social media at the moment [who] aren’t particularly pro-vaccination, that are worried, that are scared, that think that vaccinations are a bad thing,” she said. “And I think that we probably need to do a bit of an education piece around the safety of the vaccine.”
The anti-vax movement gained ground during the pandemic when the COVID-19 vaccine became mandatory for many frontline workers. Data released by UNICEF in 2023 shows Australians’ confidence in vaccinates dropped 7.5 percentage points from 93.8 per cent before the pandemic to 86.3 per cent in 2021-22.
Hoffman also said anti-vaccine sentiment from the Trump administration – including from health secretary and vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr – had worsened the problem.
She said in her experience, she rarely witnessed vaccine sceptics before the pandemic. “It’s now something that I’m having a conversation most weeks with my patients about.”
Hoffman added that GPs wanted patients to speak openly about their concerns about vaccines rather than going down “a TikTok rabbit hole” that could provide false information about the risks.
“We want our patients to come and talk to us about anything that they’re hearing through the media or that they’re worried about. And we’d much rather that they spoke to their GP than went on a TikTok rabbit hole, which may or may not be linking them up with correct information,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman added that people often didn’t realise the vaccine needed to be taken annually and that could have contributed to falling rates.
Flu vaccination rates have decreased for all age groups in Victoria and NSW, except for those aged between five and 15-years-old.
The flu vaccine is free for select vulnerable groups, but otherwise costs about $20 to $30.
Wright said governments could encourage the uptake of the vaccine for children by making the intranasal vaccine, administered as a nasal spray, free.
“Many children are fearful of needles, which can stall vaccination efforts,” Wright said. “That’s why needle-free vaccinations are a game changer.”
Queensland, NSW, SA and WA have committed to providing free childhood intranasal vaccinations ahead of 2026, but other jurisdictions have not.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
