Primary care thinks flu peak has peaked is ‘bold’

Madrid, January 16 (EFE) – Lorenzo Armenteros, spokesman for the Spanish Society of General Practitioners and Family Doctors (SEMG), said the peak of the flu has not yet been reached as a significant drop in the number of cases has not yet been detected. arrival. He believes that based on current data and minimal declines, the flu has peaked, which is a “bold” risk.

In an interview with EFE, Armanteros described the current situation as a “small sawtooth” and a “stable plateau without a significant decline”, stressing that experience shows that if the positive number drops significantly, it could reach this week maximum value. It’s already the fourth week of January.

Armenteros recognized that the influx in primary care health centers has decreased as patients with common illnesses have decreased in line with health department recommendations, but hospital emergencies such as influenza A and respiratory viruses persist, not reduction, which puts pressure on services.

A SEMG spokesperson explained that for every 10 patients with respiratory viruses, 9 are influenza and 1 is COVID-19, but there has also been an increase in gastrointestinal viruses, and the coexistence of two viruses (influenza and COVID-19) is “unusual” “of.

Emergency physicians also agree with primary care that there is a “plateau.”

However, Pascual Piñera, first vice-president of the Spanish Society of Emergencies and Emergencies (SEMES), believes that the drop in positivity is not decisive as it could indicate that the peak has been reached or will be in the future A few days will produce significant gains.

For the emergency physician, “Talking about stabilization does not mean that cases are decreasing, nor does it mean that the situation is under control, because the peak is still high, and we don’t know whether it will go up or down.”

Piñera believes that the data released on Thursday by the Surveillance System for Acute Respiratory Infections (SiVIRA) released by the Carlos III Health Institute will be decisive in observing what happens next, because “the decline lasts only a week and is still predictable. “. As they say in primary care, up.

The head of the emergency services at Murcia’s Reina Sofia University Hospital is committed to remaining “cautious” and watching the situation develop.

Currently, the emergency room visit rate remains at 10%. Piñera said the patients were elderly and had underlying conditions that made their condition more severe.

The latest data from SiVIRA shows that in the first week of January, after rising for four consecutive weeks, influenza A infections began to fall from January 1 to 7, with 387 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with 430 the previous week . . The total number of acute respiratory infections also dropped from 966 to 935 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Meanwhile, internist Julián Olalla, a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology (SEIMC), insists that although incidence rates are falling nationwide, “there are still 14 or 15 bad days in the hospital.”

Olara explained that this does not mean an increase in infections at the hospital level, but that what happens in the community takes a while to reach the hospital.

The expert said the curve is starting to slowly fall in most communities, but in hospitals it continues to rise. Olara did not quantify the decline but argued it must be a “conditional decline.”

“There is no threshold for staying calm, but we have to see that because of the reduction in numbers, there are fewer admissions and there are fewer admissions to intensive care units,” he noted.

The official concluded that the current situation was “expected.” At the community level, “it seems like it wants to go down, but that’s one week’s worth of data, whereas in medicine it’s just a line in the water.” EFE.

BF/JLG

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