Mr Day's wife, Jennifer, posted a heartfelt plea for support and pictures of her husband and son on Facebook the day after he was rushed to The Alfred hospital. "James has been battling Influenza the last eight days. Unfortunetly it has hit him and his body quite hard and last night he was admitted to the Alfred ICU. He is very sick," she wrote. James Day and his wife Jennifer Day. "A specialised retrieval team was sent from Alfred Hospital yesterday to place James on a machine to provide cardiac and respiratory support (ecmo). He is intubated and they are supporting his heart. He is critical and we have no time frame for him. "Please send your thoughts this way, he very much needs it right now."

Grieving family, friends and colleagues are now paying tribute to Mr Day. Traralgon man James Day has died from the flu. Credit:Facebook Latrobe Regional Hospital chief executive Peter Craighead said staff at the Traralgon hospital were in shock. "James was with us for a short time, but had connected with so many of our staff who are understandably shocked that his life was taken in this way," Mr Craighead said. "Our nurses who work with his wife Jennifer are equally upset, knowing how challenging a time this has been for her and their young son."

The couple were both working with acute medical patients in the hospital's Avon unit, James as an orderly and Jennifer as a nurse. They have a three-and-a-half-year-old son, Jackson. Nurse and colleague Jenna Hooper, who set up a GoFundMe account to support the family, said James passed away on Sunday afternoon with Jennifer by his side. Ms Hooper said she was keeping the account open for more donations to support Jennifer and Jackson. She said Mr Day was friendly and compassionate.

"I can't think of a more perfect couple together," she said. "They're both very friendly and compassionate, always looking out for others," she said. Loading Ms Hooper said hospital staff had banded together to collect food donations for Mr Day's bereaved family. A spokesman from Victoria's Department of Health and Human Services said the flu could strike anyone in the community, even normally healthy people with no underlying health issues. "Our sympathies are with the family, friends and colleagues of the deceased," the spokesman said.

Mr Craighead said the hospital's staff were regularly informed about their risk from influenza and were encouraged to get immunised. "We offer a free flu immunisation program to our staff and volunteers each year. Our staff are also educated in the correct hand hygiene techniques to reduce the risk of passing on or contracting infection," he said. He said staff were encouraged to stay home if they were sick and advised to see their GP, which Mr Day had followed. There have been more than 1½ times as many confirmed flu cases so far this year than in the whole of 2018, new data shows. But despite the surge in early cases, experts say this year's season is not worse than average, and an early start to flu season could mean an early end.

This year to date, there have been 97,920 laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza across Australia, compared with 58,870 cases for the whole of 2018, according to the latest data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS). Professor Robert Booy, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Sydney, has said while a flu vaccine won't prevent people from getting influenza 100 per cent of the time, it does make a difference. "Essentially you can halve the risk of catching flu by vaccination," he said. "It's not perfect, but it's more than helpful." Latrobe Valley Express