Flu season yet to peak in ‘exceptional year’ for winter viruses

Ireland is in the grip of an “exceptional year” for winter viruses as fresh data supplied to health chiefs suggests that the peak of the flu season has yet to be reached.

The HSE’s chief clinical officer, Dr Colm Henry, said the health service is “significantly concerned” about the trajectory of the influenza virus and that officials do not know when it will peak.

The latest data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) on Friday shows that the level of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) may have fallen slightly, that influenza is still on the rise, while Covid-19 hospitalisations remain steady. There were 670 patients in hospital with Covid-19 on Friday, and around one-third of those were there explicitly because they were sick with the virus.

A national crisis management team has been stood up and will meet twice a week, while an operational team attached to it will meet every day. Health bosses are searching for any additional capacity, including in the private sector, as well as additional GP hours and enhanced community diagnostics. Within hospitals, the triage system is being used to prioritise those most in need of care.

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“We remain significantly concerned over the pressure that the healthcare system, end to end, is facing. We remain concerned over the trajectory, particularly, of influenza cases,” Dr Henry told The Irish Times. “It hasn’t yet peaked, and there is no indication as to when it will peak.

“There are some trends that support the idea that it may be an exceptional year for influenza. It started earlier, and there has been a longer run-in towards whenever the peak will be,” he said. “We have been above the baseline of the influenza-like illness rate for six weeks now, the longest we have been over that for several years.”

He said it was “hard to draw definitive conclusions on Covid-19″ because of changes to testing, but said “the hospitalisations are steady and the numbers of patients being diagnosed each day in hospital is certainly steady, but it is too early to draw conclusions”.

Dr Henry said it was not too late for people to get the flu or Covid-19 vaccines. He also warned people may face protracted delays if they arrive at emergency departments. “The confluence of these winter viruses is having a huge impact on all sites.”

[ Hospital overcrowding has reached ‘intolerable’ levels, nursing union says ]

The Government, meanwhile, has said there are no plans to introduce fresh Covid-19 travel restrictions on incoming travellers from China. The Coalition is also not currently considering any other population-wide restrictions. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “Based on assessments of the current epidemiological situation, there are no plans to introduce travel restrictions in Ireland.”

On Friday, France, Spain, Italy and the UK announced restrictions on people arriving from China. The US, Japan, Taiwan and India have also announced stricter measures for those intending to travel from China such as the requirement for negative test results.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said a surge in Covid-19 cases in China was unlikely to have a big impact on the situation across the EU and so any related measures at this time were “unjustified”.

The heightened fears have arisen after Beijing scrapped its zero-Covid policy, creating a wave of disease infecting millions of people in China each day. There are no indications of any new variants of concern emanating from China.

The Department of Health said on Friday night that the overall Covid-19 epidemiological situation in Ireland showed that trends across a number of key indicators have increased in recent weeks.

The number of confirmed cases in critical care has increased over recent weeks. On average, there were 96 new Covid-19 hospitalisations per day observed in the seven days to December 30th. There were 29 confirmed cases in critical care as of Friday morning compared with 32 a week ago.