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– It is still uncertain whether there has been a domestic infection with the flu this season. No flu testing has been reported in weeks 48 and 49, FHI writes about its latest weekly flu report on Thursday.
It is very abnormal at this time of year.
In week 49 of last year, 242 cases of influenza infection had already been detected in Norway. 31 patients with influenza received treatment in the hospital, of which 5 in the intensive care unit.
This year, only three cases of influenza infection have been detected in Norway. All are considered probable infections imported from abroad and therefore the disease has not been shown to have spread further in Norway.
Violence: – Good news
– Are good news. We know this so far from other parts of the world, which often have the flu outbreaks before us. It’s been a mild season in Australia and it looks like it will be in Europe too, the director of the Line Vold department at the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) tells NTB.
Now zero people are hospitalized with the flu, which naturally frees up capacity for corona patients. There are currently 132 of them, 24 in the intensive care unit, according to the Norwegian Health Directorate.
– It is positive in terms of capacity. So we don’t receive the additional burden that could be feared with influenza and covid-19 patients requiring hospital treatment at the same time, says Vold.
May cause fewer deaths than normal
During a normal season, health authorities estimate that 900 people will die from the flu in Norway. In recent years, there have been between 2,000 and 5,000 proven influenza patients admitted to the hospital and more than 200 to the intensive care unit.
So far, there have been more than 1,800 hospitalized patients and more than 350 in the intensive care unit with covid-19.
The death toll is currently much lower than in a normal flu season, with 387 COVID-19 patients killed so far.
But this is despite the fact that he has had very intrusive measures that he does not usually have against the flu.
– 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 told NTB in November.
However, he stressed that we would have had many more COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations this year without the measures.
Uncertainty prevails
According to FHI, influenza is probably the infectious disease in Norway that usually affects the majority of people and generates the highest burden of disease in the form of hospitalizations and deaths. During a normal season, about 10 percent of the population is infected.
This year, however, it is highly uncertain what will happen.
– Also in much of the rest of the world, there has been a low incidence of influenza and there is greater uncertainty than usual about what to expect next winter in the northern hemisphere, writes FHI in its latest weekly influenza report.
