While flu cases have already peak, it is expected there will be a steady rate in the coming weeks due to intergenerational mixing\n<\/p>\n
There were 1,777 confirmed cases of influenza last week, down from just over 3,500 cases earlier in the month, according to data from the HSE and the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.<\/p>\n
The latest figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) have shown that 181 admitted patients were waiting for hospital beds as of Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the News at One on RT\u00c9 Radio, the CMO of the HSE Dr Colm Henry said: \u201cIt’s not the case that the cases fall precipitously after [the peak] and that pressures abate quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s expected that in the weeks following Christmas, ongoing pressures, a plateau of cases largely driven by ongoing socialisation, what we call intergenerational mixing, exposing people who may be more vulnerable to flu.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo even though we feel we’ve reached the peak of cases, we expect ongoing pressures for the next few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Chief Medical Officer added that despite high numbers of flu cases reported this year, it was managed well by the health service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat has happened is the impact of these cases hasn’t translated through to the levels of harm we’ve seen in previous years and that conversion rate of cases out in the community through to people requiring hospitalisation because they’re so sick hasn’t been as severe and this may well be an indicator of two things.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne is the relatively high level of vaccine uptake, particularly in older groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd secondly, the kind of end-to-end response that we see between GPs seeing for example an additional over 16,000 patients anticipated this week, extra clinics to avoid those patients having to resort to attending emergency departments, to additional senior decision-makings in hospitals, diagnostics.<\/p>\n
“And the effect of this really has been, thankfully, fewer trolleys, and particularly more importantly, reduced lengths of stay while people wait for admission, which can cause great harm for patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Henry also recommended the public to avoid contact with vulnerable people, that vaccines are still available from general practitioners and pharmacists and to consider the different ways you can access healthcare, such as the additional GP clinics, out of hours GPs and local injury units.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While flu cases have already peak, it is expected there will be a steady rate in the coming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60,898],"class_list":{"0":"post-218924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-latest-news-ticker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}