The sort of thing I got via computer translation of Italian online newspapers so far is the typical stuff, telling the same story. eg:
Con l'avvio di gennaio i malanni stagionali sono (da sempre) più frequenti. Tuttavia, quest'anno, complice anche il sopravvivere del Covid, la stagione influenzale sembra preoccupare...
www.leggo.it
Influenza, doctors warn: "It hurts more than Covid, peak not reached." Emergency room under stress throughout Italy
With the start of January, seasonal ailments are (always) more frequent. However, this year, also thanks to the survival of Covid , the flu season seems to worry experts, who are constantly monitoring the situation. "More than Covid, I'm worried about the flu : it's hitting hard, much more than SarS-CoV2 and the peak hasn't been reached yet." This is the alarm of Marco Falcone , secretary of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases , Simit, interviewed by Adnkronos Salute.
Covid and the flu that is worrying
Falcone also underlined: «The cases and hospitalizations are decreasing due to Covid, but the data on deaths are 2-3 weeks late. Those deaths - an increase of 33% compared to a week ago - are of elderly and frail people affected by the disease in the period of maximum spread of the virus that we recorded twenty days ago. Data that shows us only one thing: that Covid is still associated with the risk of death for the at-risk categories", the elderly and frail.
«However – he underlines – at the moment in hospitals we have more serious cases of flu than of Covid». From now on «I expect a progressive decline in SarS-CoV2 infections, as there has been an important epidemic phase. Conversely, for the flu we have not yet reached the peak", she concluded.
Incomplete data
«The epidemiological trend» Covid-19 «despite being affected by an inevitable delay in the provision of data by the Regions, due to the holiday period, is consolidated as having absolutely little impact on hospital admissions, an indicator which is certainly more reliable and significant today, in addition and in a decrease in contagion and transmissibility indices. As expected and in line with other countries, the flu is still growing which adds to the transmission of other respiratory viruses."
Thus the Director General of Health Prevention of the Ministry of Health, Francesco Vaia , who commenting on the bulletin with the weekly Covid data, underlined how «in this period, attention and monitoring remain high and the invitation to maintain the preventive and therapeutic aids for the most fragile".
Alarm in some regions
Meanwhile, it is reported that emergency rooms are "under siege" throughout Italy. Waiting times for patients requiring hospitalization are increasing worryingly. Fabio De Iaco , president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine , Simeu , recently provided an overview of the situation : «In Lazio alone, there are currently over 1,100 patients awaiting admission in emergency rooms; they reach 500 in Piedmont , while in Lombardy ordinary hospitalizations have been suspended due to overcrowding." Local newspapers give an account of borderline situations in almost all the large cities of the Peninsula, from Genoa to Taranto. After New Year's Eve the emergency did not end, on the contrary.
«At a national level – adds De Iaco – we are recording very strong pressure on all emergency rooms and in various regions plans against overcrowding by hospitals and healthcare companies have been activated».
Difficult situation in Campania
Covid, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus are also hitting hard in Campania, which in the last two weeks has ended up in the red zone in the map of the regions drawn up by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità . An impact that only in the Neapolitan area is reverberating on the front lines of hospitals, also thanks to the intermittent closure of family doctors' offices on the many holidays and pre-holidays of this period of the year.
Some examples illustrate the situation. At the moment 50% of the 46 pneumology beds at Cardarelli are currently occupied by patients with pneumonia that started with a simple flu. From midnight on January 1st to 6pm on Wednesday January 3rd, a total of 1,415 emergency accesses were recorded at the Ospedale del Mare , San Paolo and Pellegrini , of which 43 were code red, 317 were code yellow of medium severity, and 927 were code green. and 125 low or very low urgency whites. Also noteworthy are the difficulties for the ambulances of the 118 network, forced to park for hours in emergency rooms before being able to admit patients and return to the city circuit.
www.irishmirror.ie
www.nature.com
