Two weeks later, with fewer than 50 confirmed cases of the flu virus, health authorities thought the outbreak was over, or at least the first wave of the campaign, but more severe cases were discovered among hospitalized patients. In fact, HUBU ICU has had to treat 12 patients due to viral infections, most of which were complicated by bacterial pneumonia. Of those, five still require intensive care.
This is one reason why the Carlos III Health Institute estimates that the mortality rate is higher than in other years, with 6.4% of all patients hospitalized for influenza dying. This data cannot yet be specified with data from HUBU – official sources have not yet provided data on serious hospital admissions due to influenza at the plant – but until the start of the pandemic there was a large discrepancy, with HUBU estimating 30 deaths from influenza during the campaign (2017), others had 5 deaths due to infection (e.g. 2018 and 2019), or 13 deaths (winter 2016).
Accurate data on flu fatality rates always take time to obtain because it is calculated by reference to excess mortality over the entire flu season, which runs from early October to the end of March (although the peak of the epidemic is shorter, around six or eight weeks) . This information is compared with patient records to determine in how many cases viral infection was the cause of death and in how many cases viral infection occurred at the same time as other illnesses. And, based on this information, it is possible to determine how many people died from the flu. This is a particularly detailed analysis that HUBU carried out before the coronavirus pandemic, as it joined the Regional Severe Influenza Surveillance Network in 2016 to gain more information on this typical winter disease and be able to take action during the next campaign measure.
(For more information, see this Thursday’s print edition of Burgos Journal or here)