RATES OF swine flu infection in the population have continued to decline over the past week and the current wave of the pandemic in the Republic has probably peaked, health officials confirmed yesterday.
The Department of Health’s chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan, said rates of infection in the past week dropped to 134 per 100,000 of the population, down from 174 per 100,000 the previous week. This equates to about 17,000 people being infected during the past week, down from about 27,000 a week earlier.
While rates of infection among children under four and among those aged five to 14 did increase slightly in the past week, infection rates overall came down. An extra 72 people were hospitalised with the virus in the past week, but the rate of increase in hospitalisations and in admissions to intensive care with the virus is also down slightly this week.
Meanwhile, the HSE has confirmed it is investigating “a handful” of complaints in relation to people being charged for the swine flu vaccine by GPs. The vaccine as well as its administration is free for everyone.
More than 100,000 people have now received the swine flu vaccine at HSE clinics and forms returned by GPs show they have vaccinated a further 65,000 people.
However, the HSE said that as returns were slow from GPs, the numbers that had actually been vaccinated by family doctors at this stage was likely to be two to three times this figure.
At least 11,000 pregnant women have also been vaccinated, with numbers surging in the past week following the death of a pregnant woman from swine flu.
A total of 213 adverse reactions to the vaccine have now been reported to the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) and all these were along expected lines.
Dr Joan Gilvarry of the IMB told a press briefing at Government Buildings that about three million people across Europe had now received the swine flu vaccine. Among these were more than 100,000 pregnant women and she revealed there had been a small number of miscarriages and stillbirths reported by pregnant women within days or weeks of getting the vaccine, but in all cases no causal relationship with the vaccine had been established.
None of these miscarriages were reported in Ireland.
She added that statistics indicate there are 40 to 60 stillbirths occurring in Ireland on a monthly basis and some may occur after vaccination in future here, but this does not mean the two events are linked.
Dr Holohan said he was satisfied there was no connection between the miscarriages and the swine flu vaccination.
Dr Darina O’Flanagan, director of the national Health Protection Surveillance Centre, said around 4 per cent of the population had now had swine flu.
She said it looked like this wave of the pandemic had peaked and the more people that were vaccinated, the less likely it was that there will be a second wave of infection here.
Dr Kevin Kelleher, head of health protection with the HSE, said the executive will begin calling those aged over 65 years for vaccination next week.
The vaccination of healthcare workers and children under five has begun and the HSE will go into schools to vaccinate older children later this month.
It will visit larger schools first and in the case of small schools pupils will be asked to attend HSE swine flu vaccination clinics. Information packs are being sent to schools with consent forms for parents.
No further deaths from swine flu were reported in the Republic in the past week but two were reported yesterday in the North.
To date there have been 16 deaths in the Republic and 13 in the North.