The flu continues to rise in Catalonia with an incidence of 153 cases per 100,000 inhabitants – higher than the same week last year -, especially in children younger than four years old, which indicates that the rise will probably continue in the coming weeks, according to forecasts provided yesterday by the Department of Health.
The current peak incidence of flu in the week of Christmas is still lower than in the years before the pandemic, when it reached around 350-400 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Health.
“The level of transmission is high and the high incidence in children under the age of four indicates that it will probably continue to rise”, said the same sources. In fact, in the week from December 18 to 24, the number of diagnosed flu cases exceeded 10,000 and the following week they were already at 12,087, according to the data provided yesterday.
On the other hand, cases of bronchiolitis have fallen from 803 to 630 and pneumonia has also fallen slightly, from 2,604 to 2,538.
These data refer to the 52nd week of 2023, from December 25 to 31, when 66,565 cases of acute respiratory infections (ARI) were registered throughout Catalonia, a figure that includes flu, covid, RSV ( respiratory syncytial virus or bronchiolitis) and other respiratory infections, which, as a whole, have had an incidence of 845 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, which indicates a slight decrease which, from Health, is attributed to the coincidence with the Christmas holidays, in which the ministry did not collect the sentinel samples it normally does, and citizens made less use of the assistance services.
In any case, Salut warns that the positivity of the multi-tests in the pediatric population show that the flu continues to be the virus that circulates the most and ARIs already fill the emergency services of the large Barcelona hospitals, such as Sant Pau, although not yet the peak of these diseases has been reached.
The Christmas holidays, with family and mass gatherings, have favored the increase in infections of respiratory viruses, points out Dr. Míriam Mateo, head of the Sant Pau hospital’s emergency service unit.
In this center they have had a “very bad” last week of the year, with many consultations per day of elderly patients and others with serious pathologies, such as cardiac ones, who are most affected by the flu or respiratory viruses and end up admitted to the hospital
Mateo admits that they are “at their maximum”, while a spokesperson for the Vall d’Hebron hospital acknowledges that “we have more income due to viruses, as every year around this time”. At the Hospital del Mar, they indicate that they continue with the same pressure of the last few weeks, “like every year”.
For his part, the president of the Catalan Society of Family and Community Medicine, Antoni Sisó, considered yesterday that the perception of primary care consultations is that cases of flu and covid have increased in particular .
Flu transmission continues to rise (45.2% of cases), followed by RSV (15.8%) and covid, which remains stable (4.8%).
The incidence of the latter seems to be stabilizing, although hospital admissions of affected patients have increased in Catalonia. Currently, there are 720 people admitted to Catalan hospitals in normal beds – 176 more than last week – and 24 people are in intensive care, 11 more than the previous week.
In this sense, the vaccine coverage of people vulnerable to covid is 58% for those over 80 years old and 45% for people between 70 and 79 years old, while coverage for the flu of same groups is higher, with 65% and 52%, respectively.
