Flu rates shoot up in Hungary

Influenza is gripping Hungary. So far, nine people have died as a result of flu-related complications. More and more hospitals have banned visits due to contraction fears. Three of the victims had contracted influenza B.

In some areas, visits to doctors by patients with flu-like symptoms have shot up over the past week, health authorities told MTI on Wednesday.

This year a compound vaccine against a new type of A-type flu, the B-type and H1N1 has been available but take-up rates lag behind last year, when fears were rife over an epidemic of H1N1, commonly known as Swine Flu.

For example, Zala County in south-western Hungary reported a 70 percent rise in flu-like symptoms over the past week, with 285 cases per hundred thousand residents reporting the illness, 47 percent of which was in the 15-34 age group. One patient in the county who did not get vaccinated is being treated in intensive care on a ventilator, the local health authority said.

Several other counties have also declared flu epidemics. In Somogy County, the rate went up by 50 percent. In the fourth week of the flu outbreak 337 per hundred thousand turned up a surgeries reporting symptoms there. Three out of 12 patients with serious respiratory problems had contracted the influenza B virus. This type of virus was also present in one nursery and a school in the county.