Acute respiratory infections, specifically influenza A, They return with force to Spain and are causing an avalanche of patients who go to the emergency services35 percent more than a year ago, and is expected to continue rising until the third week of January.
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The photo of saturated emergencies is repeated throughout Spain, according to the first vice president of the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (SEMES), Pascual Piñera.
In an interview with Efe, Piñera emphasizes that 10 percent of these patients end up hospitalized and the lack of beds becomes the first problem that hospitals face, “which have nowhere to put the sick.
The lack of beds becomes the first problem that hospitals face.
“It is not a problem of templates although they have to be updated, but of beds,” says this professional, and details that the profile of these patients varies “from young people with flu pathology who go to the emergency room because the health center delays their appointments, to people over 80 years old with pneumonia due to the flu, who end up hospitalized and some die.
Lack of beds is what the Workers in Network union of the La Paz university hospital in Madrid also denounces.one of the largest in Spain, who specifies that it is not only due to the flu, which is a “perfectly known and predictable seasonal pattern”, but also due to the “general deterioration of public health in Madrid.”
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Piñera explains that “now the consequences of the social interaction of Christmas Eve are being suffered, in seven days the results of New Year's Eve will be seen and in the third week of January, the greatest epidemic peak as a result of the Three Kings holiday, the return to schools and universities.”
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.
A vendor passes a sign informing about mandatory face masks.
EFE/EPA/PHILIPP GUELLAND
It was only interrupted during the pandemic, when isolation and masks acted as a barrier.
Sanz emphasizes that “the flu that matters” is the one that decompensates the underlying diseases, the one that affects the elderly and the population with risk factors, and that is why vaccination is insisted on.
Regarding vaccines, this pulmonologist remembers that the vaccination campaign has not yet ended nor have the necessary objectives been met to make the flu milder.
According to the Ministry of Health, the objectives for vaccination against flu and covid-19 this 2023-2024 season are to reach or exceed 75% in older people and health and social health personnel, and 60% in pregnant women and people with health conditions. risk.
And the effectiveness of the flu vaccine is not as high as immunization against covid-19 and that influences more of the population to suffer from the disease, even if the condition is milder.
EFE
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