Prague, Jan 20 (CTK) – The number of patients suffering from flu and acute respiratory diseases has increased by 10 percent in a week and 122 serious cases of flu, 37 of them fatal, have been registered since the beginning of the season in the Czech Republic, chief sanitary officer Eva Gottvaldova said Friday.
She said there are 1691 ill people per 100,000 inhabitants now and the blanket flu epidemic continues.
“The dominant flu virus is of the A/H3N2 type,” Gottvaldova said.
The number of ill is mainly increasing among children under 14.
“In the current flu season, a total of 122 clinically serious cases of flu which require intensive care were reported by January 19, 2017. Thirty-seven people have died in connection with flu,” the National Institute of Public Health (SZU) said in its regular report Friday.
Out of the total of serious cases, 101 afflicted people were over 60.
An epidemic is declared as soon as the number of ill reaches 1600 to 1700 ill per 100,000 inhabitants, but this may differ in individual regions.
The differences are due to “the given region’s specifics, such as the age structure, employment, the drawing of a holiday during the disease and the like,” the Health Ministry’s spokeswoman Stepanka Cechova wrote to CTK.
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