The new report on the epidemiological surveillance of Respiratory Infections, for the week from March 13 to 19, was presented on Thursday by the EODY.

A total of 75 deaths and 71 intubations from coronavirus were recorded, while the rate of hospital admissions decreased, as did the number of new intubations.

Summary for the week of 11/2023: Influenza symptoms (regardless of pathogen)

✓ a decrease compared to the previous week was recorded in the community, in all age groups SARS-CoV2 virus – COVID-19 infection

✓ the positivity in all the tested samples showed a decrease compared to the previous week

✓ the number of admissions for COVID-19 showed a decrease compared to the previous week and a decrease of 23% compared to the average weekly number of new admissions over the previous 4 weeks

✓ the number of new intubations showed a decrease compared to the previous week and a 36% decrease compared to the average weekly number of new intubations during the previous 4 weeks)

✓ the number of patients with COVID-19 infection who are hospitalized with intubation is 71

✓ 75 deaths were recorded with a median age of 84 years (range 55-100) ✓ during the weeks 09-10/2023 all strains sequenced belonged to Omicron sub-variants BA.2 and BA.5

✓ the detection frequency of BA.2 increased and reached 63% of all sequenced samples

✓ sub-variant BQ.1.1 was the most frequent sub-variant of BA.5 (84%)

✓ the most frequent BA.2 sub-variant was XBB.1.5 (39%), followed by BA.2.75 sub-variant (24%) and XBB sub-variant (21%)

✓ surveillance of viral load in municipal wastewater showed a reduction in SARS CoV2 virus circulation in 8 out of 10 areas tested

Influenza virus

✓ flu positivity in the community showed an increase in sentinel samples

✓ no new serious case of laboratory-confirmed influenza with hospitalization in ICU was recorded, while no new death from laboratory-confirmed influenza was reported

✓ from week 40/2022 to week 11/2023, 65 people with flu were hospitalized in ICU and 22 deaths were recorded

✓ during the same period, 313 samples positive for influenza viruses (sentinel samples and hospital samples) were recorded in the two influenza reference centers, of which 281 (90%) were type A strains and 32 (10%) were type B strains

✓ of the 279 type A strains subtyped, 256 (92%) were classified to subtype A(H3N2) and 23 (8%) to subtype A(H1N1)pdm09

✓ during the last three weeks, an excess of influenza type B virus has been recorded

Respiratory syncytial virus – RSV

✓ positivity remained at the same low levels