Teenager falls victim as flu cases worsen
BRITAIN will be in the grip of a flu epidemic by the end of the month if the virus continues to spread at its current rate, figures suggest.
The heads of A&E units warned that hospitals were being forced to take “intolerable” safety risks, with patients dying in corridors.
Health service data show flu rates are continuing to rise, with one in five hospital cases suffering from the most deadly strain, labelled “Aussie flu” after it fuelled Australia’s worst flu season for more than two decades.
Flu rates have doubled in the last fortnight, according to the figures, raising the spectre of an epidemic within a month if trends continue.
Victims of the flu outbreak include a Second World War Spitfire pilot and an 18-year-old girl, Bethany Walker, from Applecross, in the Scottish Highlands, who died after becoming ill at home, initially with flu symptoms which later developed into pneumonia.
She was airlifted to Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, but died later last Friday. Miss Walker’s mother, Heather Teale,
said she was “truly devastated” by the loss of her daughter. Owen Hardy, 95, from Chichester, a former wing commander who was awarded the Legion d’honneur, died on Jan 4 after contracting flu, his daughter said.
Meanwhile, consultants leading 68 NHS A&E departments wrote to the Prime Minister warning of “appalling” safety risks because hospitals had too few staff and beds to cope with the current demand.
The letter called for a “significant increase” in funding for social care services and warned that the level of safety compromise in some hospitals was “intolerable”. It said 50 patients at a time had been left waiting for beds in casualty units, with 120 patients a day being managed in corridors, “some dying prematurely”.
The latest flu figures show that almost 2,000 patients have been hospitalised with confirmed flu so far this season. More than one fifth were infected with the deadly strain A(H3N2), known as “Aussie flu”. The total death toll is now 85, with 27 deaths last week.
The figures for England show rates of GP consultations about flu have risen from 18.9 per 100,000 people to 37.3 per 100,000 people in a fortnight. If the trends continue, the country is on course to reach epidemic levels – of more than 109 cases per 100,000 people within a month. Such rates have not been seen in England since the winter of 2010. An epidemic has already been declared across the channel.
Official figures published yesterday showed the worst A&E performance for 14 years, with fewer than four in ten patients within the four-hour target period at some hospitals.