Jacksonville Memorial Hospital Officials continue to encourage the public to take protective measures as the entire Memorial Health network of hospitals is seeing a dramatic increase in cases of the flu.
Memorial Health reports as of this morning, 104 patients have been hospitalized with influenza across all five hospitals compared to just four at this time last year.
Dr. Anthony Griffin with Jacksonville Memorial says the heavy flu caseload combined with the continued rising cases of RSV and Covid means healthcare facilities everywhere are becoming overrun with patients, especially the emergency room.
“It’s extremely busy, I was there yesterday and there and they had twenty people in the waiting room, and this was only at noon. So it’s very busy and the outpatient clinics are also busy. We have a pediatric walk-in clinic and we’ve been seeing twenty to thirty every day.”
Locally Jacksonville Memorial has seen 170 cases of the flu thus far with now six people hospitalized. Griffin says they are also seeing a surge in cases of RSV, including a large number of adults who are affected this year.
“It is primarily a childhood illness and most of us have been infected by age two or so. So you can get it multiple times over your lifetime. But for adults that are over fifty and they have some other underlying issues with heart or lung problems, they are much more susceptible to having a worse outcome with the RSV.”
Griffin says Jacksonville Memorial continues to encourage the public to get both the flu shot and Covid vaccine and to keep up with preventative measures.
He says if you do find yourself getting sick, stay home. “If you are ill and you don’t feel like it’s an emergency, treat your symptoms, test for Covid at home, and if you’re positive you can call your provider and see if there is any available treatment for it. Otherwise, you just treat symptoms and hunker down as they say.”
For additional information about influenza trends and details about symptoms and prevention, visit the CDC website at CDC.gov.