Especially the elderly have died from the coronavirus disease. The number of people in intensive care because of the corona has now decreased, but the peak of the flu epidemic is just around the corner.
Corona– and the influenza virus are raging all over Finland and also cause a lot of serious diseases and deaths.
The disease caused by the coronavirus, which spread wildly in the fall, has killed especially the elderly, who mostly avoided infection in previous waves of the disease.
Around the turn of the year, there have been around 10–20 coronavirus patients in intensive care at the same time. In November, the number was almost 40.
Professor of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Matti Reinikainen The University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital assess the current situation as still calm. For the majority, the corona virus still causes only mild symptoms.
Elderly people severe forms of the disease are explained by the weakening of the immune defense that occurs naturally with age.
“Immune defense weakens decisively between the ages of 75 and 80. In addition, corona disease can be dangerous for people with basic illnesses and those whose immune defenses have weakened due to illness or medication, for example,” says the chief physician Tuija Leino From the Institute of Health and Welfare (THL).
The protection obtained with vaccines in elderly people is also not preserved in the same way as in younger people.
A little before the turn of the year, the corona infections started to subside, but at the same time the influenza A virus has started to spread and its burden is already visible in hospital wards and emergency rooms.
However, according to Reinikainen, the need for intensive care is rarely caused by influenza viruses. In the intensive care units, mostly individual patients with influenza are treated each year.
Can we based on this information, declare one virus more dangerous than the other?
“It's hard to say at the moment. At the beginning, the corona virus was more dangerous than the usual flu. Now the situation has stabilized.”
Elderly people also die from influenza every year. In Finland, there are 1,000–2,000 excess deaths in winter each year, and influenza has explained a large part of this. Excess mortality means that people die more than normal, taking into account the aging of the population.
When assessing the dangerousness of the virus, the number of people needing hospital treatment should be compared to all those infected. This means that if a large proportion of those infected become seriously ill, the disease is dangerous.
“The elderly have had a lot of corona infections this winter, probably clearly more than flu infections in normal flu years. Some of the corona infections have been mild, some serious.”
If the elderly had as many flu infections as corona infections, we would see how many diseases would cause the need for hospital treatment and deaths.
The problem is that no one currently knows the exact number of corona or flu infections in Finland, because mass testing is not organized. The peak of the influenza epidemic is just around the corner.
It it is known that corona viruses are more contagious than influenza viruses.
“If the coronavirus has managed to spread in a nursing home, it has infected everyone nearby and typically those in the worst condition have died. The influenza virus does not circulate in nursing homes in quite the same way.”
For a long time, the world has been dominated by the omicron version of the coronavirus. The variant is more contagious than its predecessors, but the disease it causes is milder.
“Furthermore, it must be noted that the situation is no longer the same as in 2020. Finns have taken vaccines and immunity has accumulated from the diseases they have contracted,” says Leino.
The influenza virus also mutates. Therefore, the intensity of flu seasons varies a lot.
“It matters in terms of danger how well the vaccine hits the predicted virus.”
Examining the disease picture caused by influenza has been difficult since 2020, as the corona restrictions also affected the spread of influenza. On the other hand, it is too early to say anything certain about the disease caused by the ongoing influenza virus.
Danger when evaluating, it is also worth considering what kind of people the virus takes to the hospital. If, for example, school children who were previously healthy die from a disease caused by a virus, it is a very different situation than for an elderly, already weak person.
“Currently, the disease caused by omicron is practically not dangerous for healthy working-age people, young people and children. It can be dangerous for the elderly.”
Leino emphasizes that numbers alone do not tell who has contracted a serious disease. The length of hospital stay caused by the disease is also relevant in terms of danger.
“Due to both the coronavirus and the influenza virus, small children rarely have to be hospitalized, and those who do have to, because of a fever.”
Most often, if a small child or infant is hospitalized for a respiratory infection, the cause is the rs virus.
Some of the pathogens that cause hospitalization remain unrecognized, even with the hospital's tests.
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