NHS<\/a>.<\/p>\nData shows that people older than 70 are more likely to catch infections, become severely ill and die. Discussing his new annual report, which focuses on infections, Sir Chris said: \u201cWhilst we are very systematic about reducing infections and preventing infections in children and in young adults, in older adults it is often a lot more hit and miss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Research into infections in older adults is \u201cmuch smaller proportionally\u201d than people would expect, despite its importance, he added. Deaths from infections are \u201coverwhelmingly dominated by older adults\u201d and this will become more of an issue due to the ageing population, Sir Chris told a briefing.<\/p>\n
Infection warning<\/p>\n
\u201cSince this population is getting bigger, if we do nothing, the amount of infection is going to increase,\u201d he said. Looking at flu as an example, Sir Chris said the \u201csignificant pressures over the next few weeks in the NHS is because flus are ramping up, and it really affects the elderly\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also pointed to \u201cclear evidence\u201d that \u201chaving an infection increases your risk of a stroke, particularly in the first two weeks, but it can extend out to as long as a year afterwards\u201d. Sir Chris said stroke risk increases from \u201ca whole range of infections\u201d, including urinary tract infections, pneumonia, flu and HIV.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is slightly less strong evidence that this is true for heart attacks,\u201d he said, but added that research suggests people are more likely to have a heart attack in the days and weeks following infection.<\/p>\n
The chief medical officer added: \u201cWhat\u2019s the importance of that? Well, if we could reduce the infections, we would reduce strokes and heart attacks, and I think also certainly at this moment in time, if someone\u2019s got a severe infection in older age, we should be looking to modify all the risk factors they have to reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sir Chris said infections can also cause delirium, adding that \u201cfor all these reasons, my view is that we should be taking infections in older people much more seriously\u201d. Across the population as a whole, doctors must be cautious about over-prescribing antibiotics, which is leading to drug resistance, where medicines no longer work against infections, he said.<\/p>\n
Sir Chris cautioned against antibiotic use when \u201csomeone has almost certainly got a viral infection\u201d for which they will not work, but added: \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t give blanket rules across the entire age spectrum.\u201d For example, in older people, the risks of an infection turning into sepsis are much higher, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the risk benefit is more in favour of (antibiotic) treatment in older people than it is in younger people.\u201d Asked what action people can take themselves, Sir Chris said: \u201cThere are a significant number of things that older people can do to reduce the risk of infections.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of those are common sense. They\u2019re things like reducing the risks by hand washing, by careful preparation of food \u2013 that\u2019s a very important one \u2013 and encouraging people who\u2019ve recently had an infection themselves not to come and visit them until they\u2019re completely clear of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then there\u2019s vaccinations.\u201d He said people should also work to decrease their risk of strokes and heart attacks in as many ways as possible, such as keeping their blood pressure down and stopping smoking.<\/p>\n
Vaccine uptake in UK<\/p>\n
The report also looked at vaccine uptake among children and pregnant women, as well as planning for future pandemics and threats. Sir Chris said \u201cvaccines in childhood are amazing\u201d, adding that when he was training in medicine, Haemophilus Influenza B (Hib) was a common cause of meningitis in children, but when a vaccine was rolled out, cases dropped dramatically.<\/p>\n
Speaking more generally about vaccines for children, he said \u201cthey\u2019re drifting down a bit, but they\u2019re not falling off a cliff, as is sometimes said\u201d. Sir Chris added: \u201cSome of the people who are keen to spread disinformation like to give the impression that the UK is becoming a vaccine-sceptical nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is absolutely not true. If you look at these numbers, over 90% of parents will bring their children for vaccination.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there has been a drifting down, and we need to reverse that. Importantly, a lot of this is to do with the practicalities of getting hold of the vaccine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look properly at why people are not getting vaccines, often it is more to do with how easy it is to get hold of rather than actually any major change in people\u2019s desire to get vaccinated.\u201d He urged pregnant women to have their flu jab this winter, adding that flu vaccination in pregnant women \u201cis not as high as we would want it to be\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sir Chris added: \u201cThis is a real issue, because flu in pregnancy is a dangerous combination\u2026 so I would certainly encourage anybody who is pregnant to get their flu vaccination.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a very sensible thing to do, and we\u2019re going into a quite a tricky flu season, so now is a good moment to remind people of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief medical officer in England was a major figure during the UK Covid crisis Robert Rowlands Deputy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,104,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-301102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-nhs","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Chief](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_Coronavirus-Tue-Jan-5-2021.jpg\")
Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty(Image: PA)<\/p>\n