Spain’s winter flu season has arrived earlier and far harder than expected.
Emergency departments across the country are reporting a sharp jump in cases linked to a new, highly-transmissible strain of influenza A.
According to Javier Millan, vice-president of the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (SEMES), the so-called ‘K variant’ is accelerating transmission and piling pressure on hospitals.
The strain, however, does not appear to cause more severe illness, he stressed.
Footage shared from Catalonia shows corridors of one hospital filled with patients on beds, with reports of people waiting over 24 hours to be attended.
SEMES reports that attendances for acute respiratory infections have surged by around 30% in recent days, pushing the national incidence above 600 cases per 100,000 people.
Some health departments are already logging figures well over 1,600 cases, suggesting huge regional pressure.
Doctors say the spike in infections is tipping many patients with existing conditions into crisis, particularly cardiac patients, people with chronic respiratory diseases, the elderly, the immunocompromised and those undergoing cancer treatments.
Are symptoms different with the K variant?
Experts say the symptoms remain typical for a flu, consisting of fever, cough, fatigue, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and occasional digestive problems.
Dr Maria del Mar Tomas, microbiologist at A Coruña’s University Hospital and spokesperson for the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC), told Gaceta Medica that there is no evidence the K variant causes more serious illness by itself.
However, she noted that the parent strain, H3N2, ‘already tends to produce more severe disease in older adults’, which means the current surge could lead to more complications simply because more vulnerable people are becoming infected.
