Today, Thursday, May 18, EODY published the new weekly report of the epidemiological surveillance of Respiratory Infections.

According to the report, in the week of May 08 – May 14, 54 deaths from coronavirus and none from influenza were recorded. A 4% increase was recorded over the average weekly number of deaths over the previous 4 weeks (average weekly number of deaths, weeks 15/2023-18/2023: 52).

The median age of those who died was 85.5 years (range 58-98). All those who died had underlying diseases and/or were 70 years of age or older.

The intubated with coronavirus in hospitals is 56 while no new death from influenza was recorded. It also clarifies that the cases of the “Arcturos” mutation of the coronavirus, rose to 46 from 14.

In summary week 19/2023:
Influenza syndromes (regardless of pathogen)

✓ a decrease compared to the previous week was recorded in the community
SARS-CoV2 virus – COVID-19 infection
✓ the positivity in all the tested samples showed a small increase compared to
last week
✓ the number of admissions for COVID-19 showed a decrease compared to the previous one
week and a decrease of 23% compared to the average weekly number of new admissions during
previous 4 weeks
✓ the number of new intubations remained at the same levels as last week,
while it showed an 18% increase 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 56
✓ 54 deaths were recorded with a median age of 85.5 years (range 58-98 years)
✓ during the last weeks all sequenced strains belonged to the BA.2 sub-variants
and Omicron’s BA.5, with BA.2 predominating from week 9 onwards
✓ at weeks 16 and 17 the most frequent sub-variant of BA.2 was XBB.1.5 (>90%)
✓ a total of 46 positive samples for the new variant under monitoring have been detected,
XBB.1.16
✓ surveillance of viral load in municipal wastewater showed an increase in SARSCoV-2 virus circulation in 4 out of 10 areas tested
Influenza virus
✓ positivity for influenza in the community showed a decrease in sentinel samples
✓ no new serious case of laboratory-confirmed influenza with hospitalization in ICU was registered
in week 19/2023, no new death from laboratory-confirmed influenza
✓ from week 40/2022 to week 19/2023, 68 people were hospitalized with flu in
ICU and 26 deaths were recorded
✓ during the same period, 365 samples positive for viruses were recorded in the two influenza reference centers
influenza (sentinel and hospital samples), of which 287 (79%) were strains
type A and 78 (21%) type B strains
✓ of the 285 type A strains subtyped, 258 (90.5%) were classified into the subtype
A(H3N2) and 27 (9.5%) in subtype A(H1N1)pdm09
✓ during the last weeks, a prevalence of the influenza type B virus has been recorded
Respiratory syncytial virus – RSV
✓ all tested samples were negative for RSV