29 people have died from flu so far this winter
HSE assistant national director of public health, Kevin Kelleher, said there has been a decline in the rate of infection, but it is too early to say the outbreak has peaked.
He warned that there is still a significant amount of flu virus in the community and he is urging more people to get vaccinated.
Dr Kelleher said the rate of vaccine take-up in Ireland remains very low, at 13% to 15%. To control the flu, 50% of the population should be vaccinated and Ireland is nowhere near that.
A specialist in public health medicine at the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, Joan O’Donnell, said that there were 290 confirmed flu hospitalisations last week, bringing the season total to 835, with 30 patients currently in critical care.
Director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, Cillian De Gascun, said most of the virus circulating in the community is a good match to the vaccine.
Dr Kelleher, meanwhile, said the flu rate is still above the medium risk level, so it is still higher at the moment than it has been for many years.
People will continue to contract the flu over the next three to four weeks, he said.
He also said it is likely that there will be further outbreaks of flu in nursing homes until mid-April, and possibly after that, due to the peculiar way the virus behaves.
However, Dr Kelleher said that if the rate of infection decreases again next week, they could be “fairly certain” it is on the wane.
Meanwhile, the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) has confirmed that it will focus on the longest-waiting patients this year.
The NTPF will initially focus on patients waiting over 18 months, particularly for day cases, and expects to begin arranging treatment by April.
It has been allocated a budget of €20m for this year and will focus, initially, on key specialities with high numbers of long-waiters, including ophthalmology, general surgery, dental, urology, and vascular surgery.
Health Minister Simon Harris said it is unacceptable that patients are waiting excessively long periods for procedures or outpatient appointments.
“Continuing to drive down the length of time patients are waiting for procedures is a priority for me in 2017,” said Mr Harris.
