Influenza has claimed the life of a 40-year-old woman hospitalized at Be’er Sheva’s Soroka Medical Center.
The patient, whose identity was not released, died of a complication from the flu, hospital officials said.
In Soroka alone, there are approximately 40 patients hospitalized with respiratory viral illnesses, including a 50-year-old man connected to an ECMO and a second person being maintained on a ventilator. Both are sedated and listed in serious condition, the hospital said.
The incidence of influenza cases is rising across the entire country, according to Professor Lior Nesher, director of Soroka’s Institute of Infectious Diseases.
Occupancy at the emergency room in Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center has exceeded 200 percent, hospital officials said Sunday. Occupancy in the internal medicine wards in the hospital have topped 105 percent. Most of the patients are suffering with complications of the flu and pneumonia.
“The winter is characterized by an increase in respiratory tract morbidity, and in particular, influenza,” Nesher told Channel 12 News.
“This is a contagious respiratory disease that may cause complications, especially among at-risk populations,” he warned.
In the past two weeks, five patients were hospitalized with complications from the flu, most of them between the ages of 20 and 50, according to Dr. Uri Galante, director of the ECMO service at Soroka, who spoke with Channel 12 News.
“It is important to emphasize that flu vaccination can prevent such extreme situations from occurring,” Galante said.
In Israel, flu vaccinations are available each year, free, at one’s local HMO (kupat holim) usually beginning in October.
