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VASKINE: This year’s flu shot. Thanks to extensive vaccination, not least the corona measures, very few have been infected with the common seasonal flu this year. Ensures free capacity in hospitals. Photo: Ole Berg-Rusten / NTB
If the infection subsides, the corona pandemic may end up being much milder than a normal flu season in terms of the number of deaths and hospitalizations. But it is because of the measurements.
– If we are lucky, we may not have more deaths from covid-19 than we do in a normal flu season. But some of the deaths we get from COVID-19 will likely be people a little younger than what we see in a normal flu season, health director Bjørn Guldvog tells NTB.
At this time last year, seasonal flu was spreading. Of 4,588 tested, 92 had been diagnosed with the influenza virus. 17 patients were hospitalized.
This year the situation is completely different. 3,517 people have been tested for the flu. Only two have tested positive, according to FHI. Last week there were zero positive samples. A patient is hospitalized.
– So far, there are very few cases of influenza in Norway. And if it continues like this, then this is good news. Because then you won’t need intensive care for flu patients. We need intensive care units on standby if there are many who become seriously ill from coronavirus, National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) Director Camilla Stoltenberg tells NTB.
Fall this spring
The low level of influenza infection has a lot to say about the capacity of hospitals. During a normal flu season, between 2,000 and 5,000 flu patients are admitted to the hospital and more than 200 of them to the intensive care unit.
When the comprehensive crown measures were introduced in March, the previous flu season also ended abruptly. This has contributed to the fact that no more people than normal have died in 2020, even though we are in the middle of a deadly corona pandemic.
In contrast, far fewer people have died or needed hospital treatment from COVID-19 so far than is usual for seasonal flu.
Much more hospitalized
If you compare it, for example, to the 2017/18 flu season, which was particularly difficult, so far it is nowhere near the same number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths from covid-19.
A total of 1,809 COVID-19 patients have been admitted to Norwegian hospitals, 291 of them in the intensive care unit, according to the latest weekly NIPH report. 306 are dead
During the 2017/18 flu season, 5,147 were admitted to the hospital with the flu virus and 379 to intensive care. In fact, FHI assumed that the actual number of hospitalized patients was 7,600. In relative terms, fewer influenza patients than COVID-19 patients end up in the intensive care unit.
– 2017/18 was a flu season that weighed heavily on the intensive care unit, and we are concerned to avoid getting the flu this year with as many people infected and seriously ill as that season, says Stoltenberg.
The director of the National Institute of Public Health, Camilla Stoltenberg, presents a vaccine against influenza. She says there have been very few cases of the flu so far this year. Photo: Ole Berg-Rusten / NTB
More than 1000 died
Therefore, FHI has purchased and distributed more flu vaccines this year than normal.
FHI assumes 1,400 died from influenza in 2017/18. This is a high number, but not entirely abnormal.
– When we say that there are about 1,000 pieces that die as a result of a seasonal flu season, it is actually a statistical number. It is not the case that we have always verified that it was the flu that caused the death, but we see that in the periods that have seen an increase in the flu, there has been a higher mortality, emphasizes the health director Guldvog.
Health director Bjørn Guldvog emphasizes that the situation would have been much worse without the interventionist corona measures. Photo: Jil Yngland / NTB
– Not painless
Both Guldvog, Stoltenberg and the Minister of Health, Bent Høie (H), are very clear that this year we would have had a much more serious situation without the intrusive measures of the crown.
Høie points out that the 2017/18 flu season shows that you had the ability to handle that situation on your own. But it was without the covid-19 in society.
– But when the flu season is tough, the workload in our hospitals is too. Not that it is painless. This is one of the reasons we are so clear about vaccination in the risk group, because you don’t want to have that kind of extra burden, Høie tells NTB.
