A tsunami of sick people flooding hospitals across the country has been exacerbated by earlier than expected record flu numbers.
Health authorities are warning Australians to make sure they get the flu jab this year following a spike in cases, with more than 20,000 notifications already reported for 2019.
New figures show almost one in 10 people hospitalised with the infection in 2018 were admitted to intensive care.
About 5800 adults went to hospital with the virus last year and 9.4 per cent of those aged below 65 needed treatment in the critical care unit.
Across the country figures are nearly double those recorded each month last year
National notifications in the past quarter to March 1 are 2.9 times the quarterly rolling five year mean.
Vice-president of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s NSW branch Caroline Diamantis said vaccination offered protection against the most common circulating strains but also meant people were less likely to wind up in the ICU if they were hospitalised.
“There still remains, however, a level of complacency within the community with regard to annual flu vaccination,” she said.
She said one in four people mistakenly believed they didn’t need a flu shot because the virus wouldn’t strike them.
Queensland and NSW have been worst hit followed by Victoria and South Australia.
Queensland hospitals have been at capacity across the last year thanks to a “tsunami of admissions” never before seen in the state at this time of year.
Ten hospitals in the state’s southeast were on code yellow for two days, declared when hospitals are essentially full and cannot meet public demand for health services.
Health Minister Steven Miles said the bed shortage wasn’t proof of a crisis in the public system, rather the result of a simultaneous and unseasonal spike in demand across three hospital service areas.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk blamed the federal government, summer weather and the flu for the patient spike.
NSW
Flu activity has been “elevated” across NSW, with respiratory presentations to emergency departments above the average for this time of year.
Eight influenza outbreaks were reported from residential aged care facilities last month.
In the four week period to March 3 there were 2244 confirmed influenza notifications, “markedly higher” than the 1144 reported for February 2018, and higher than the
number of notifications reported for January 2019 (2065 in a five week period).
There were 13 influenza outbreaks reported in February — by far the highest number of
influenza outbreaks reported for this time of year in the past eight years.
All were due to influenza A, with eight reported in residential aged care facilities, four in hospital wards and one in a mental health facility.
There were also seven deaths in aged care residents linked to these outbreaks, but all had other significant health issues.
In the past few years NSW has had increasing flu case in January and February thought to be from travellers returning from northern hemisphere with the illness.
Sydney mum Marion Langford was left terrified when she had to rush her six-week-old son Seth Ritson into hospital in the middle of the night when he got a temperature and stopped feeding.
“He went downhill really quickly and before I knew it he had people buzzing around him,” she said.
“It was so scary. He had to have a stomach tube put in, he was on an oxygen mask, all kinds of tests, a lumbar puncture to rule everything out.
“He had so much mucus he couldn’t breathe or feed and once they start to miss a bit of food they get dehydrated really quickly and he’s so little he doesn’t really have an immune system yet.”
Doctors eventually discovered it was a strain of flu, which Mrs Langford assumes came from his older brother being in daycare, with baby Seth spending three nights in hospital.
The illness hit the weekend before he was due to get his shots.
VICTORIA
The state’s horror flu spike saw a child die among more than 3400 cases recorded so far this year.
That’s more than double the usual number of influenza cases recorded since January 1 compared with the same time in 2018.
The Department for Health and Human Services said the increase could be caused by factors including an increase in testing and awareness, or because the illness had been passed on by people who had recently travelled overseas.
At the time, Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton warned it was likely there would be more deaths.
Convicted child sex offender George Pell was among those tested in a prison outbreak that saw at least 19 behind bars diagnosed.
Victoria’s annual influenza season typically runs from April to October when the department issues more detailed weekly reports on activity.
QLD
Queensland’s flu spike started in summer when numbers were the highest they have been in the last five years.
Confirmed cases in November and December were “unusually high”.
There have been 5735 cases so far this year, up from the 2074 year-to-date average in previous years.
Last year there were 15,664 notifications in Queensland, down from the peak 2017 year with 56,590.
“We must remain vigilant during 2019 because, as we’ve seen in the past, flu can occur at any time of the year and every flu season can be different,” warned Queensland Health’s Dr Jonathan Malo in December.
“It’s also important for pregnant women to get vaccinated against flu at any time of the year to protect themselves and their newborns.”
Extra beds that have been opened to deal with the spike in demand will remain open into winter, when hospitals routinely face greater pressure from the flu season.
— With AAP