44 children under the age of five have been hospitalised with flu over the past six weeks.
The HSE is urging the population, especially the most vulnerable, to get a flu vaccination with 298 people already admitted to hospital wards around the country with influenza since the start of October.
102 of them are aged over 65.
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The Director of the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, Dr. Greg Martin, said the HSE is recording flu cases earlier than in previous seasons.
“If you look at the cases going up, and you look at hospitalization, which is creeping up in a way that is higher than the numbers we might have seen in previous years, it does look like it's what we call an early flu season.”
To date, this season there have been four deaths from flu.
Since the start of October, there have been 828 cases of laboratory-confirmed flu – around one in ten are in kids under the age of five.
15 of the cases are in babies under the age of one – and five of those babies have been hospitalised.
Dr. Martin said there is concern about young children and elderly people who are admitted to the hospital.
“We’re seeing this in little kids. The message is people can get tremendously unwell from influenza.
“It’s different from the common cold. You get that muscle ache, that high temperature, and you could get a dry cough. You can feel really, really unwell.
“Can you imagine that same virus getting a foothold in a person that's frail or immunocompromised or otherwise ill with a chronic disease?
“When we think of it like that, there really is a strong incentive for us to do everything we can to kind of protect these people.
“This really is an opportunity for us to do something.”
He added: “ It’s really important for us to try and protect the acute hospital system because they look after people would so many other diseases.”
He said the vaccine is free for people who are at risk and is simply a nasal spray for children between 2 and 17.
“There have been 298 hospitalisations so far. This is the beginning of the flu season and there will be many, many more cases and many more hospitalisations in the weeks and months to come.
“Clinicians admitting a child would be treating a child that's got serious symptoms and really is in desperate need of that additional care."
This year and last year, he said there is a young population that was hidden away from viruses during the pandemic.
“Younger people over the last few years would have been protected or hidden from the back from influenza and RSV and so there might be less natural immunity in younger people, than maybe the case in a typical year.
“This may be why are we seeing sort of an early flu season, and particularly severe RSV season.
“It’s earlier than we’ve seen in recent years. It’s unusual to see this many cases, in general, this time of year.”
It is hoped that an early flu season will mean cases of flu and Covid-19 won’t peak at the same time.
“We are expecting that there will be increased numbers of COVID-19 in Ireland and certainly within Europe.
“If the peaks of these curves were separated out that would alleviate some of the pressure that's on the hospitals at that point in time.”
But he said it is difficult to predict whether the flu cases will increase substantially in the weeks to come or whether they will overlap with Covid-19.
“The public health doctor in me wants to really get that message out if you're a healthcare worker or care worker get yourself vaccinated and if you're any one of the people in the risk groups for influenza, or a person that's eligible to get their COVID-19 vaccine, these things really, really work.
“They make a big difference.
“We’ve got a little window where there's a real opportunity to get that vaccine message out there because once you've got tremendously high numbers, you've missed that opportunity to get ahead of this.”
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