Deaths from influenza could reach historically high levels this year.<\/p>\n
Epidemiologist Michael Baker said data so far, including high hospitalisation rates, pointed to a likely big increase in the number of fatalities.<\/p>\n
However, that would not be known for sure until the end of the year.<\/p>\n
On average, influenza was responsible for about 500 deaths a year.<\/p>\n
But that figure was not straightforward to arrive at, and relied on modelling.<\/p>\n
That was because there could be multiple factors in a person’s death which were not always recorded as the primary cause.<\/p>\n
Baker said one example was that a person could die of a heart attack but the heart attack would never have happened if they had not had influenza.<\/p>\n
Data such as the number of calls to healthline and the number of hospitalisations were used to show how much flu was circulating.<\/p>\n
“A lot more people got infected and therefore we saw a lot more seriously ill people,” Baker said<\/p>\n
Because a certain proportion would died from the disease, there would likely be a bigger number this year, he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s speculation but it has been such a severe influenza season based on hospitalisations we’re almost certainly going to be a the upper end of the historic range,” he said.<\/p>\n
Data from PHF Science showed hospitalisations from flu and flu-like illnesses had been in the “very high” category for weeks.<\/p>\n
In Auckland they were at 10-year highs.<\/p>\n
This years peak of people with severe acute respiratory infection from influenza was 9.5 out of 100,000. Last year’s was 4.3.<\/p>\n
Next time there was a big out break, Baker said he would like to see more communication from health authorities about the risks and what people could do to protect themselves.<\/p>\n
But it was good to see the vaccine was free this year to the most at risk groups, he said.<\/p>\n
That undoubtedly helped more people survive, he said.<\/p>\n
Flu hospitalisations rates had started to fall for the general population in the past fortnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deaths from influenza could reach historically high levels this year. Epidemiologist Michael Baker said data so far, including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-599375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}