Flu causes eight deaths and puts 627 people in hospital

There have been eight deaths from flu reported to the HSE’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre.

There was a spike in the number of flu-related hospital cases in the past week.

HSE assistant national director of public health and child health Kevin Kelleher said they were expecting between 60 and 120 flu-related deaths.

Most of the 307 flu-related admissions last week were children under five and adults aged 65 years and older. The flu season started earlier this year and so far 627 people with flu have been admitted to hospital, 25 to intensive care.

Dr Kelleher said it was a “fairly big” flu season — but how long it would last remained to be seen.

Most of those hospitalised had influenza A, particularly influenza AH3, which tended to cause severe illness in elderly people.

Dr Kelleher said far more elderly people were expected to be admitted to hospital with flu-related complications including pneumonia.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common respiratory virus that can affect people of all ages, is also circulating in the community, and shows no sign of abating.

Dr Kelleher said it had been a particularly severe year for RSV and it was causing a lot of health problems in children and the elderly.

The health expert said people could still get the flu vaccine — the HSE has distributed 1.1m doses and there was evidence at least two-thirds had been used.

There has been a 7.5% increase in the number of people attending hospital emergency departments, but admissions are 2% lower than the same week last year.

Meanwhile, out-of-hours doctor services are coming under pressure because parents are Googling symptoms of their children’s illnesses and then treating routine colds or coughs as “potential catastrophes”, the director of a Dublin GP co-op has said.

Mel Bates, medical director of the Northdoc service in north Dublin, said out-of-hours services across the State had been “absolutely slammed” in the last three weeks.

He said Northdoc’s D Doc out-of-hours service was designed for 2,000 contacts a week, but over each of the last three weekends, they had 1,500.