The most recent update from the Balearic health service for incidence rates of all acute respiratory infections indicates 271.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
For flu specifically, the rate is 60.8, but this has yet to grow exponentially as it has in previous years; a rate of 150 is not uncommon. The incidence of Covid remains comparatively low - 22.2 per 100,000 - and respiratory syncytial virus stands at 26.5, with the rate for babies under one year old being 132.5.
While Covid has become an established factor creating demand on the health service, flu is generating far more. There was relatively little incidence of flu during the pandemic, especially the winter of 2020/2021, because of very low rates of transmission; mobility restrictions and precautionary measures for Covid reduced the spread.
Covid is now one more concern, but María José Cordero of the UGT union regrets a lack of foresight that is experienced year after year with the flu epidemic. Hardly anything has been learned from the pandemic, she believes, with health service personnel now waiting for the impact of what is yet to come.
She explains that doctors and nurses at some health centres have already found themselves in the position of having to put aside regular patient consultations in order to attend to emergencies. They are assigned a quota of patients with daily appointments, but with the "avalanche of people" going to emergency rooms with flu, Covid or other respiratory-related problems, they cannot cope. "The practice is not new. It is common at this time of the year and every time the services are overstretched."
She adds that this rescheduling of duties doesn't just happen in health centres. It also happens in hospitals and in private healthcare clinics. "The problem is that we have taken for granted what should be an exception." A solution, she suggests, is a permanent 'flying' team, who can move from one centre to another as demand requires them.
Meanwhile, the president of the doctors union in the Balearics, Miguel Lázaro, is warning that "the situation is going to get worse". Manacor Hospital, he says, has already been at the limit.
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