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Acute respiratory infections, specifically influenza A, have returned with a vengeance this winter. Hospitals have reached breaking point, reporting 35% more admissions than this time last year and that figure is expected to continue rising until the epidemic peaks in the third week of January.

 

The situation has deteriorated across Spain to the extent that hospitals are actually running out of beds. This is according to the head of the Emergency Department at the Reina Sofia in Murcia, who explained that this year, the flu is attacking all age groups.

 

The profile of patients, he said, ranges “from young people with flu pathology who go to the emergency room because the health centre delays their appointments and people over 80 years of age with pneumonia due to flu who end up being hospitalised, and some die.”

 

In La Paz University Hospital in Madrid, one health care professional explained that 105 patients are currently waiting to be admitted, while beds are piled up in double rows in the hallways.

 

Given the extent of the crisis, the governments in the Valencian Community and Catalonia have decreed this week that masks will once again be mandatory in hospitals and health centres for the time being, and more regions are expected to follow suit.

 

However, this is a situation that repeats itself every year. For the pulmonologist and secretary of the executive committee of the infectious area of ​​the Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (Separ), Francisco Sanz, these epidemic peaks usually occur at the end of December and beginning of January and extend until mid-February. This trend was only interrupted during the pandemic, when isolation and masks acted as a barrier.

 

The experts agree that increased social interaction over Christmas and New Year has contributed to the spread of flu, but a disappointing vaccination campaign hasn’t helped matters. The campaign began on October 15 and ends on January 31, and the Ministry of Health’s goal is to immunise 75% of older people against influenza and Covid, but this figure is still a long way from being reached.

 

 

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