More people died in Scotland during a flu epidemic at the turn of the 1990s than the first wave of coronavirus, official figures show.
Public health experts fear the consequences if flu breaks out alongside coronavirus this winter.
In 1989 the seven days to Christmas Eve was Scotland’s deadliest single week since records began in 1974, with 2,400 deaths, which was 1,092 more than the five-year average.
This is far more than the 1,978 people who died in the worst week of the coronavirus pandemic — the second week of April — which was 878 above the five-year average.
By the end of the eight-week cycle of excess deaths in the second week of January 1990 the death toll had reached 14,594 people, 4,122
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