{"id":355887,"date":"2025-12-18T10:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T10:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/355887\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T10:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T10:49:07","slug":"flu-data-we-are-not-out-of-the-woods-warns-nhs-as-rise-in-hospital-flu-cases-in-england-slows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/355887\/","title":{"rendered":"Flu data: &#8216;We are not out of the woods&#8217; warns NHS, as rise in hospital flu cases in England slows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flu surge slowing but NHS &#8216;not out of woods yet&#8217;, warns top doctorpublished at 09:48 GMT<\/p>\n<p>09:48 GMT<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As the latest stats show that the surge of flu cases is slowing, England&#8217;s top doctor warns that the health service is &#8220;not out of the woods yet&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Meghana Pandit, NHS National Medical Director, says that &#8220;combined with the impact of strikes, a stream of winter viruses means many hospitals will be on high alert in the days ahead&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pandit says that it remains &#8220;vital&#8221; that people still seek care from the NHS if they need it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following a rise of 18% compared the previous week, NHS England says the slowing is due to &#8220;higher vaccination rates&#8221; and the &#8220;public taking additional steps to protect elderly and vulnerable people&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In England, more than 18 million people have now had a flu vaccine, 306,000 more than the same week last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, flu cases continue to rise sharply in parts of England, with patients in hospital up 39% in the East of England and 40% in the South West.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">NHS England adds that hospital beds are also filling up quickly, with 94.2% occupied each day last week on average.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flu surge slowing but NHS &#8216;not out of woods yet&#8217;, warns top doctorpublished at 09:48 GMT 09:48 GMT&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-355887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}