Hospitals are not overcrowded, but there is an increase in the number of flu cases compared to last year at this time. This was said in the program “Crossroads” on Nova TV by the former director of the National Center for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases, Prof. Todor Kantardzhiev.
“Hospitals are suffocating. Especially in Great Britain, where the connection between health authorities and the media is the strongest and everything spreads immediately”, he explained.
Prof. Kantardzhiev shared that months ago, when the epidemic was in the Southern Hemisphere, a subvariant of influenza A - H3N2 appeared. “In the following months, while it was circulating, it received more mutations and there are now 9 in total. It puts people in hospitals”.
According to him, the hospitals are not overcrowded, but there is an increase in the number of cases compared to last year at this time. “It is mainly people over 65 years of age who have secondary diseases. The flu is more severe for them, they need oxygen. Most of these people have forgotten to get vaccinated or have not immediately taken a medicine against the flu prescribed by a doctor”.
“If you have such a medicine on hand, one package is enough for the whole family. Whoever gets sick should have taken it within 10 hours - after 24 to 48 hours it will be much better. The rest should take one pill of this medicine. But this is a medicine prescribed by a doctor. No self-medication”, said Prof. Kantardzhiev.
“You call the phone and tell the doctor what's wrong with you, and not wait a day for it to pass. The flu doesn't go away. Adults should communicate by phone, not go to public places”, he believes.
Prof. Kantardzhiev explained that children from 5 to 14 years old are a vulnerable group in society because they have never been in contact with this subtype of influenza H3. “Collective immunity is weakened. That's why they are the first to get sick. Of the 90 or so samples tested from children last week, more than 15% were sick with H3N2.
“We have been in much worse situations”, he commented.
According to him, no vaccines should be left in the refrigerators. “The mutations in this new variant change the effect of the vaccine quite a bit. It starts to work only against the most severe complications, but the Centers for Disease Control in Stockholm says that as many people as possible should be vaccinated”.