‘Triademia’ causes respiratory illness to rise while waiting for flu peak

The current incidence rate of acute respiratory diseases in Spain is 908.6 per 100,000 inhabitants. That bag contains those affected by COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the most feared form of bronchiolitis in babies. Daniel Lopez-Acuña, an epidemiologist who worked at the World Health Organization from 1986 to 2014, said this is known as “tripleemia” and that it has appeared for the third year in a row. “More attention must be paid to it.”

The ratio is just over last year’s 800.1, according to the latest report from the Carlos III Institute, but what’s most striking is its rate of growth. López-Acuña explained that “the numbers have increased significantly” and that he favored “a clear message to the population and measures to be taken.” Juan Antonio Sanz Salanova, spokesperson of the Spanish Society of Preventive Medicine, predicted that in the case of hospital emergencies, they have noticed the tension and are preparing at full speed for the peak, “This It will happen in a week or two as usual”. and hygiene.

So don’t claim victory if you haven’t fallen yet, because there’s still a final push and there’s still time to become viral fodder. However, experts agree that there is no need to be afraid: “Apart from the coronavirus pandemic, our situation now is very similar to previous years,” points out Aito Balazs, president of the Basque-Navarre Society of Respiratory Pathology.

With the arrival of SARS-CoV-2, the chart for patients with respiratory illness has changed, as has the way they are monitored. Coronavirus colonizes the system. Similar displacements occur in other viruses, such as influenza. In the 2020-2021 season, the number of people affected by it decreased sharply: only 12 cases were recorded in the surveillance system. However, with the coronavirus under control, things are returning to the “old normal”. As a result, many people are infected with the flu: the current positivity rate is close to 25%, which is 12 percentage points higher than that of COVID-19, which remains stable.

Are our defenses against the flu now weakened? “You can’t say that,” Balazs said. This happens only in children born during the pandemic: Because they haven’t been exposed to the flu virus, they don’t develop an immune response unless they develop one later. We’ve done the rest. What happens with the flu is that it mutates every season, which means that even if we’re vaccinated, we won’t be able to effectively fight it because our bodies “recognize” a range of mutations, but may not be the ones that are going on at the time .

More testing, more attention

The Department of Health has launched a series of recommendations so that we can do our best to stop the spread of acute respiratory illnesses. It’s a way to stay ahead of the patients who are expected to go to the emergency room en masse and potentially cause them to collapse. Yes, one of them is the return to masks.

Francisco Sanz, spokesman for the Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery (Separ), explained that this is “one of the three most effective respiratory hygiene measures.” “Anyone with respiratory symptoms should use it to protect the health of others,” López-Acuña concluded. He even went a step further: “I am in favor of its reintroduction in public transportation, sanitary and social health spaces”. discharge.transmit.

Other basic guidelines are to “get the flu shot” – which can “reduce the likelihood of contracting the disease” and, if it does occur, make the symptoms less severe – and washing your hands. What has happened, Sands admits, is “we’ve gotten a little tired of these practices” and we’ve relaxed. Therefore, the spread of the virus is also greater.

Despite everyone’s insistence, there is no news about the years leading up to the pandemic. Making numerical comparisons is complicated, but according to the Carlos III Institute, in week 51 of 2016, the global influenza incidence rate was 91.31 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In the current report, we do not find the same data, which is broken down between patients treated in primary schools (225.7) and hospitals (5.6).

However, there is another thing that affects the statistics, and that is the greater ability to diagnose which type of respiratory disease we have. “There’s no more flu, there’s more diagnosis,” said Laredo hospital doctor Sanz Salanova. And before 2020, who had a test to prove they didn’t have a cold? But the flu? This December, pharmacists sold twice as much as they did in November.

“We pay more attention to what we have,” Sanz and López Acuña stress. Above all, when we come together with more people, in order not to infect the weakest: “This is one of the lessons that COVID-19 has taught us.”