Emergency room in chaos in almost all Italia due to the increase in patients infected with theinfluenza seasonal while the new vaccinations against the Covid, marking the negative record of 900 doses administered in one week. The parallel circulation of the two viruses, in such a delicate period of the year, is putting emergency rooms “to their limits, with critical issues no longer localized but widespread even in regions considered virtuous”, he denounces fabio de iaco, president of the Italian Society of Emergency and Urgency Medicine (Simeu), reporting a 50% increase in the number of accesses compared to a month ago. A “dramatic” situation no longer relative only to “regions such as Lazio, Sardinia, Piedmont, Campania, Lombardy”, but which now also concerns “Veneto, Emilia Romagna Tuscany or Friuli Venezia Giulia”, explains De Iaco.
Flu, longer duration and fever up to 41
The flu therefore runs faster and hits harder. The seasonal virus, which has been forcing Italians to bed for weeks, does not seem destined to subside. On the contrary, according to experts it could grow further. «We have now exceeded the average of 17 cases out of a thousand. We are therefore reaching the highest point of incidence ever reached in the last fifteen or twenty years and we are not even sure if it is the maximum point of this year’s epidemic“, explains at breaking latest news it is Sylvester Scottigeneral secretary of the Italian federation of general practitioners (Fimmg), who adds: «We are already at January levels, with an anticipation of three or four weeks and, looking at the slope of the curve, it is assumed that it will tend to grow further reaching levels never reached so far».
Family doctors also warn about durationboth of the virus and of the same spread. «Usually the flu reaches a maximum level but then falls – explains Scotti -, but this year we risk reaching a sort of fixed plateau, with incidence levels remaining high for a few weeks. We could also have a double curve and a rising incidence again later, doing reinfect who was already ill». «This flu form lasts a long time, even up to ten dayswith a temperature which also comes to 40 o 41 degrees and symptoms such as cough e chest pain which scares, because many patients fear not only of having Covid but of real bronchial complications».
Influenza children, antibiotics are missing in the pharmacy. The pediatrician: «Too much abuse, it’s not always useful. There are alternatives»
The alarm
«Every day we have thousands of patients awaiting admission in the emergency rooms. There is nothing new. Already in July we said that we were experiencing overcrowding in the emergency rooms that we had never known so far in the summer period – De Iaco vents again to breaking latest news – We are experiencing a new phase of emergency, I’m sorry to call it that because there is absolutely nothing exceptional and unpredictable here – he continues -. We have a’flu epidemic announced for months and we have a foreseeable and expected increase in Covid. All this has led us to the current situation of absolute insufficiency of hospitals and emergency facilities. The problems we face are two, the lack of personnel and the boarding, with all the people waiting in the emergency rooms».
According to the expert «it is a problem of ineffectiveness of the entire health system and therefore also the hospital and post-hospital are not enough because we work on communicating vessels. No one is saved alone. The emergency room problem cannot be solved by the emergency room». A solution to avoid the pressure on hospitals and family doctors already exists. It’s the vaccine. «We need to make people understand that the flu is a disease that in 99 percent of cases doesn’t cause problems, but there is that one percent from which we must necessarily defend ourselves. Influenza vaccination is now tested and must be chosen. Not out of fear – concludes Scotti – but out of normal defence».
Strong media interest in the overload generated by the anomalous flu wave in #emergency roomforced again to manage an extraordinary condition. #fieridivoi
❗️ We thank all the #journalists not #editorials by our side.
👉 https://t.co/t2f5LEA3fV 👈 pic.twitter.com/SguuLDkKNZ
— SIMEU (@SIMEU_EM) December 16, 2022
Chaos surgeries in Rome
The outpatient clinics of family doctors Roma are under pressure from the many cases of Covid-19, flu and flu-like illnesses. And “the risk of overcrowding is high”. The alarm was sounded by Pier Luigi Bartoletti, provincial secretary of the Federation of general practitioners (Fimmg) of the capital. «The numbers of these days are much higher, and in advance, compared to the normal seasonality. And this portends a concrete risk of overcrowding both in general medicine studies and in emergency room structures”.