“Weeks of increased respiratory disease burden continue, from Covid 19 and influenza to respiratory syncytial virus and other pathogens.” He highlights this on X World Health Organization expert Maria Van Kerkhove, which follows the evolution of the Sars-CoV-2 virus since the beginning of the pandemic. “Many of those suffering from serious illnesses have never been vaccinated for Covid or have not been vaccinated for 1-2 years. We expect this to continue even after the holidays.”
Respiratory virus epidemic
“Like every year, but this year even more so due to the numbers reached by flu syndromes, in this period we are witnessing a health emergency that affects emergency rooms, but not only”. Alessandro Rossi, president of the Italian Society of General Medicine and Primary Care (SIMG), described the scenario to Adnkronos Salute, going into detail about the impact that the ongoing respiratory virus epidemic in the country is having on local healthcare. “These days as family doctors we are overwhelmed with requests for information, phone calls, visits, certifications. There is an assault on our performance, like that of all healthcare professionals. Access to studies is greatly increasing. “But the first practical consequence for us is that the phone calls have doubled. If on average on ordinary days the calls to general practitioners, at a national level, are around 2 million, they have now become 4 million”.
“Dividing this total of calls by family doctors, who are around 40 thousand in Italy, we understand how each of us spends hours with the receiver in our hand”, to answer at least a hundred phone calls daily, Rossi calculates. “We give advice, indications to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations, to carry out certifications. This load has increased and naturally the outpatient visits have also increased. It should be remembered that after the pandemic, fortunately, access is by appointment and even the dematerialized prescription has been a help , so the enormous crowds that we physically saw in pre-pandemic times are no longer seen.” Moments “also at risk of further spread” of flu epidemics. But “telephone and electronic contacts and home visits have also increased enormously in this period“.
The pediatrician's advice
These days “we are at the center of the peak of the epidemic of respiratory diseases also for children, not just for adults. We have many cases of bronchiolitis, we have children who have acute episodes of asthmatic bronchitis, pneumonia. But fundamentally it is bronchiolitis that most frequent disease and which particularly clogs emergency rooms. The three viruses that are circulating are: the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in first place, followed by influenza and coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 in more or less the same quantity”. This is what Fabio Midulla, president of Simri (Italian Society of Childhood Respiratory Diseases), head of the emergency pediatrics department of the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome, says.
As a result, “emergency room visits have tripled in the last month. And 90% of the children admitted to our department are children with bronchiolitis. Children who need intravenous fluids, oxygen, who cannot stay at home” , goes on.
“Even in our emergency room there is a particular influx of children – he explains to Adnkronos Salute – The respiratory syncytial virus”, with the bronchiolitis it causes, “is what is dominating, even if there are also cases of Covid in children. But the Rsv virus is more serious and more pathogenic in children than the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus.”
What would I tell parents? To avoid sending children to school if they are not perfectly healed, and to pay close attention to primary prevention. In other words, not to forget what we have learned from Covid and from the “lockdowns” experienced in the acute phase of the pandemic. This is the message of Fabio Midulla, president of Simri (Italian Society of Infantile Respiratory Diseases), head of the pediatric department emergency at the Umberto I Polyclinic in Rome.
Among the preventive measures that parents should never give up on, the expert highlights to Adnkronos Salute in particular “washing your hands often at home, and using a mask if you have a cold. That is – he explains – if a mother has a cold and cough and has to breastfeed your baby, it is useful for you to wear a mask. The objective is to avoid contagion from other people, transmit fewer germs to those around us, it should be used like this. Other relevant aspects are obviously to encourage breastfeeding in the case of breastfed babies, and avoid passive smoking. But hand washing is the most important thing – reiterates Midulla – because contagion occurs above all with the larger droplets of saliva that are on the hands”.
Bassetti on flu: “Numbers never seen”
“This large flu epidemic in progress, so massive, will cause damage for who knows how long at the level of antibiotic-resistant bacteria”, is the warning of Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino Polyclinic in Genoa, who explains to 'Adnkronos Salute because it fears an impact on 'super bugs': “Huge quantities of antibiotics are being used – it reports – I understand that unfortunately they are prescribed after two days of fever or are used 'self-prescription'”, that is, without consulting with your doctor doctor, “and for this reason I believe that we will see the damage for the next few months or even years. In a country that is the worst in Europe in terms of resistance to antibiotics. I continue to maintain that Italians should be educated in a different way. Today, in fact, they are 'rude' even in the use of drugs and especially in the use of antibiotics.”
“Today the problem is certainly that of influenza viruses, H1N1 and H3N2” in particular, “which is added to the respiratory syncytial virus (Rsv) and also to a high circulation of bacterial infections, i.e. traditional pneumonia, pneumococcal infections. Once again on the horizon it is not the type of infections, but the quantity, because such an imperious growth in respiratory infections had not been seen in the last 15 years, at a reporting level, and probably even before”, he further states.
“Covid – he points out – has never actually represented a problem in the last 3 months, it was only for those who wanted to represent it that way. As we have said many times, 80% of hospitalizations even in the months of November and December in reality it was not due to the infection linked to Covid, but to people who entered the hospital for other reasons and then accidentally tested positive for Covid. So let's definitively put the Covid problem behind us which, I must say, was not a significant problem except for those, especially the elderly, who have not had their booster vaccinations.”
Today, Bassetti reiterates, the problem is the flu and the exploit of respiratory infections in general: “There is a significant rise in infections and in the end many of these cases circulating in the community arrive at the hospital”.
#Covid #respiratory #diseases #Boom #holidays
