The HSE is worried we could be in for a very hard flu season this winter.
The health services are calling on people in Carlow and Kilkenny to get the flu vaccine which is free for many vulnerable groups (details here).
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) have been expressing concern over the ongoing overcrowding issues at St Luke’s Hospital over the past weeks and months.
The numbers are down slightly today but there were still 24 patients left waiting for a bed and there are Covid-19 outbreaks in three wards.
Public Health specialist Dr Catherine Lynch says they’ve been looking to other countries as a predictor of how our flu season will go; “We’ve been kinda keeping an eye on what happens in Australia and New Zealand because they tend to get their flu before us and this year they had a very hard season with both flu and Covid and I suppose that’s what kinda makes us a little worried that if we have the same thing we want to have our population well protected, have people well protected going into the winter by having everyone vaccinated”.
She adds “We know we’ve Covid and now we’re going to have flu probably coming on stream you know in the next you know probably eight weeks, what we’re really concerned about this year is that you know if we have a lot of Covid and we have a lot of flu people could get both, people could be really, really sick and our best protection against both of those diseases is vaccination and we have vaccines”.
