In the last two years, before the explosion of the coronavirus, the flu had practically disappeared in Galicia and in the rest of Europe. But coinciding with the relaxation of the protection measures against Covid, it has returned to make an appearance. The incidence is still much lower than in previous seasons, but so far this season the Sergas epidemiological surveillance network has already detected 460 cases and 6 deaths.
The Galician Health Service published this Wednesday the tenth report of ‘Surveillance of the flu in Galicia’ corresponding to the week ending May 22. The document shows that the number of deaths from flu in the Community increased by two people in the last week to six deaths in the current season with the virus.
The report highlights that so far this season “only nine cases required admission to the ICU.” The predominant virus at present “is type A”, highlights Sergas, to which “practically all diagnoses” correspond. Of those that were subtyped “all are of the A(H3N2) subtype, which has not been predominant in Galicia since the 2018-19 season.
The flu began to pick up in Galicia at the beginning of March, when it is normal for cases to be declining at that point. In any case, the Sergas bulletins have since reflected a low intensity level of the virus. The latest report also points out that with respect to the previous week there has been “another slight decrease” in the number of people who consulted cases of influenza and the number of doctors who registered it. So in that week the activity trend “remains stable at the low level of intensity.”
The query rate in Galicia as a whole “decreases slightly again” compared to the previous week, a drop that, Sergas indicates in the report, “is the result of small decreases in query rates both in the different groups of age as in the four provinces».
Regarding microbiological surveillance, in week 20, which ended last Sunday, the positivity of the samples studied for type A viruses remained at 1.2 percent in Galicia.
