Cork GP urges people to get flu vaccine amid rise in respiratory illnesses 

A CORK GP has urged people to ensure they get their flu vaccine amid a rise in the volume of people with respiratory illnesses attending emergency departments (EDs).

According to the HSE, 538 people with flu and 282 with covid attended EDs during Christmas week, an increase from 312 (flu-related) and 144 (covid related) the previous week, and there were 30 outbreaks of covid in hospitals and 24 in nursing homes, again an increase from the previous week.

Respiratory illnesses over Christmas 

The Medical Director of the Irish College of General Practitioners and Cork GP Dr Diarmuid Quinlan said that doctors working in the South Doc out-of-hours service over Christmas had been seeing a lot of respiratory illness.

He said that South Doc saw more than 10,000 patients between December 23 to January 1, or approximately 1,000 people a day, 400 of which were home visits to frail elderly or anyone else who was housebound.

“Overall less than 10% were referred to hospitals, and that’s really important,” the GP said, explaining that even though that amounts to 100 referrals to EDs daily, “that’s still 900 a day managed completely and exclusively in general practice, which leaves hospitals to focus on patients they need to see, such as those who need blood tests or chest x-rays.”

Almost half of the people they are seeing are “extremes”, Dr Quinlan explained, saying that a third of those seen were under the age of 12, and one in six were over the age of 70.

The GP said that there were lots of contributing factors to this busy period, such as seasonal illnesses, the rise in covid cases, the expansion of the medical cards, the growing population and the fact that we have more old people in society now as people are, in general, living longer, all leading to healthcare in general being busier.

Advice to the public

Offering advice to the public, the GP said that, “The first thing is that there’s still time for people to get vaccinated against covid and influenza, that’s the single most important thing that people can do.

“Additionally: hand hygiene and cough hygiene, and if people are ill, they should stay at home and not go socialising or visiting particularly older, frail family members,” he added.

“The guidelines suggest you isolate five days from the onset of respiratory symptoms, and ideally you should be two days symptom-free before going back to work, as you don’t know who is at home with your colleagues, many people have vulnerable older people living with them and we want to keep this older population safe.”

He said people can also get advice from undertheweather.ie, a HSE website that provides advice on how you can treat common illnesses at home and when to get help.

He added: “Our pharmacists are the medicines experts, they’re highly skilled colleagues and a great source of advice, their knowledge medicines in encyclopedic.”