Tag: flu

Health officials concerned by rise in flu, RSV cases – The Suffolk News-Herald

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Health officials concerned by rise in flu, RSV cases

Published 5:48 pm Friday, November 25, 2022

The Virginia healthcare community is encouraging local residents who haven’t done so to get vaccinated against the flu, get vaccinated or boosted against COVID-19, and to take personal health and safety precautions as we enter what could be a particularly intense flu and respiratory illness season.

This year’s flu season is already showing early, concerning signs that it may be worse than in recent years, Virginia Department of Health officials said in a recent news release.

There are also increasing numbers of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) cases, which may cause serious illness and hospitalization in children and older adults.

If these trends continue, healthcare officials both locally and across Virginia say this could strain healthcare systems in some communities. Virginia doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers are already being inundated with a surge of sick patients seeking care, filling hospital beds, and in many cases requiring longer hospital stays.

Data from Virginia hospitals and public health surveillance information from the Virginia Department of Health suggest that the Commonwealth faces the prospect of a particularly challenging flu and respiratory disease season throughout this fall and winter. Emergency department and urgent care clinic visits involving patient diagnoses of RSV have quadrupled since early September and remain significantly elevated.

Visits for flu-like illness are also rising – for the week ending November 5, such visits are at least four times higher than in the same week for each of the past four years, according to VDH.

In Virginia, we have seen a 41 percent increase in flu-like illness and an overall 18 percent increase in respiratory illness from the week prior. Virginia Immunization Information System data from July 1-November 9, 2022 indicates that flu vaccination uptake in children younger than 12 is lower this year as compared to the same time periods during the previous three years.

Virginia Department of Health Eastern Region Public Information Officer Larry Hill gave some general everyday techniques for people to stay safe and healthy.

“The best defense is a flu shot,” Hill said. “Also wash your hands, cover your sneeze or cough and stay home when sick.”

Likewise, the Western Tidewater Health District shared a Facebook post on Nov. 13 with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Respiratory Syncytial Virus.

Described as a “common respiratory virus that

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Health care organizations urge COVID & flu vaccination and treatment

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Statement from: American Academy of Family Physicians, American Association of Nurse Practitioners, American Academy of Physician Associates, American College of Emergency Physicians, American College of Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Geriatrics Society, American Medical Association, American Osteopathic Association, Council of Medical Specialty Societies, Infectious Diseases Society of America, and AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine

WASHINGTON November 21, 2022 – Given the anticipated increase in COVID-19 and influenza cases this fall and winter, America’s health care professional organizations are coming together to remind the public of the importance of vaccinations and early treatment. A strong recommendation from a trusted clinician is one of the most effective strategies to increase vaccine uptake. We encourage our members to use every interaction with patients as an opportunity to make strong vaccine recommendations, educate and answer questions about prevention and treatment options, encourage vaccination, and where feasible provide vaccination.

We strongly recommend that everyone who is eligible, especially those at higher risk, urgently receive their updated COVID-19 booster (or COVID-19 primary series if not yet vaccinated) and influenza vaccine. We expect that the updated COVID-19 vaccine will help reduce severe illness, hospitalizations and death for our most vulnerable patients, including older adults, those who are pregnant and recently pregnant, and those from historically minoritized communities. We urgently ask all clinicians to be vigilant and prioritize vaccination in the coming months. To maximize uptake of vaccines after counseling, our organizations will continue to advocate for access to vaccines and evidence-based treatments for everyone.

Given the higher morbidity and mortality among older people, those who are pregnant and recently pregnant, and immunocompromised people, we strongly recommend that health care professionals increase their timely use of effective treatments. While newer variants may not respond to some existing treatments, health care professionals must be ready and able to prescribe life-saving oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19 and influenza, to those at highest risk. It is critical that everyone, especially those at risk for serious illness, understand the importance of testing and early communication with their clinicians to seek treatment as soon as they test positive.

We commit to continue working with federal partners to provide usable and consistent information and emerging evidence-based tools that we can rapidly push to our members. The time to act is now, and the nation’s organizations of health care professionals are ready and willing to do all

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Conspiracy theorists flock to hen flu, spreading falsehoods

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Brad Moline, a fourth-generation Iowa turkey farmer, saw this transpire prior to. In 2015, a virulent avian flu outbreak almost wiped out his flock.

Barns once loaded with chattering birds have been out of the blue silent. Staff members had been anguished by acquiring to kill sickened animals. The spouse and children enterprise, started off in 1924, was at severe possibility.

His business enterprise recovered, but now the virus is back, all over again imperiling the nation’s poultry farms. And this time, there is a further pernicious pressure at work: a potent wave of misinformation that statements the hen flu isn’t genuine.

“You just want to beat your head against the wall,” Moline stated of the Fb teams in which people insist the flu is faux or, perhaps, a bioweapon. “I comprehend the aggravation with how COVID was managed. I have an understanding of the lack of believe in in the media currently. I get it. But this is real.”

Even though it poses little possibility to people, the world-wide outbreak has led farmers to cull millions of birds and threatens to add to already growing food items rates.

It is also spawning fantastical claims comparable to the types that arose through the COVID-19 pandemic, underscoring how conspiracy theories often arise at periods of uncertainty, and how the web and a deepening distrust of science and establishments fuel their unfold.

The claims can be observed on obscure on the internet information boards and significant platforms like Twitter. Some variations assert the flu is faux, a hoax being employed to justify reducing the supply of birds in an effort and hard work to drive up food charges, both to wreck the world-wide economy or drive men and women into vegetarianism.

“There is no ‘bird flu’ outbreak,” wrote one particular person on Reddit. “It’s just Covid for chickens.”

Other posters insist the flu is true, but that it was genetically engineered as a weapon, potentially meant to touch off a new spherical of COVID-type lockdowns. A variation of the tale well-liked in India posits that 5G cell towers are in some way to blame for the virus.

As evidence, quite a few of those people declaring that the flu is faux observe that animal wellness authorities monitoring the outbreak are working with some of the exact same technology employed to examination for COVID-19.

“They’re screening the animals for chook flu

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