(by Nicola Simonetti) A person of 50 years, healthy and without comorbidity (other diseases) presented, at the end of September (27). a severe flu form.
The flu wave this year is aggressive and complications threaten even healthy people.
The Italian Anti-Infectious Therapy Society reaffirms the importance of universal influenza vaccination.
Infectivologists denounce the precociousness of the disease but also the characteristics of the patient: a person of 50 years perfectly healthy and without any kind of comorbidity, which does not fall therefore among the categories considered at risk. Due to bacterial and fungal complications, the patient, who is now recovering, was intubated and had to face a hospital stay that lasted for more than 20 days.
"If these are the signals, with a first diagnosis already at the end of September, and if the scenario that has affected Australia and other parts of the world is repeated, we will face a particularly aggressive flu season, with the circulation of influenza viruses very much different: H3N2, as in this case, H1N1, virus B. This case - says Matteo Bassetti, Professor of Infectious Diseases (SITA), University of Genoa and president of the Italian Anti-Infectious Therapy Society - suggests that this year's flu form if it does not have extraordinary numbers like those of the winter 2017-18, it can also affect healthy people and reinforce the message that influenza vaccination must be universal because there is no category of subjects spared from the potential complications of influenza ".
The flu vaccination, offered free of charge to the categories at risk and, for all others, with a cost of only 15 euros, in addition to protecting from the complications of influenza, entails an economic saving for the Health Service in terms of admissions and reduces the appeal to antibiotics.