Hospitals limit visitors as flu cases surpass COVID
Eight more people have died of the flu in North Carolina, bringing the season total to 30 flu deaths.
For the first time since before the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, more people in North Carolina hospitals are being treated for the flu than for COVID-19. In the week that ended Dec. 23, 2023, there were 722 people in hospitals with the flu, an increase of 85% in just a week. There were 710 people hospitalized with COVID, an increase of 24% week-over-week.
Most of those people are 70 or older, but there were also more than a dozen children hospitalized with the flu.
Duke Health Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Cameron Wolfe said this flu season has “been fairly typical” in terms of who is getting infected.
“It’s those extremes of age and people with underlying health issues. That’s been the same for many years with flu, and it was quite similar to what we saw with COVID, although young kids weren’t so badly affected there, but that’s already what we’re seeing here. They’re the people who really we should have been reaching out to for vaccine techniques over the past few months,” Wolfe said.
Influenza cases surpassed coronavirus and began to soar in mid-December, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and historical data shows that flu peaks in January and February.
Dr. Marwan Powers, an emergency medicine specialist and co-medical director at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center Emergency Department, said the system tested about 250 people who showed symptoms of respiratory illness in 24 hours.
"Half them returned positive for either COVID, flu or RSV. The bulk of those were positive for influenza," he said.
Wolfe said hospitals are mostly seeing Influenza A.
“That’s the more aggressive type typically. That’s always the one that always occurs here a little bit earlier as well, so we’re certainly seeing that. We see it both in pediatric cases but we also see it in elderly and at-risk patients as well so it is certainly being felt,” Wolfe said.
In December, 21% of all emergency department visits in the past week were for respiratory illnesses. The rising numbers have prompted some hospitals to return to requiring masks and limiting visitation.
Masks required at Cape Fear Valley Health
Across the state, hospitals in the southeastern counties reported the highest percentage of people going to emergency departments with flu-like illness; that rate was lowest in North Carolina's far western and northeastern counties.
"We are concerned," Powers said. "When you're seeing volumes like this, it stresses the the entire system."
Effective Dec. 28, masks are required for all patients and visitors in waiting rooms and other areas of the emergency departments of Cape Fear Valley Health, including Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayeteville, Bladen County Hospital, Hoke Hospital, Central Harnett Hospital and Betsy Johnson Hospital.
All Cape Fear Valley Health locations, including outpatient clinics, are limiting visitors.
In pediatric emergency departments, one parent or guardian is permitted in the waiting room, and two parents or guardians are allowed once the child is placed in a room.
Patients 65 and older or those who are cognitively impaired are allowed to have a visitor with them in the waiting room and triage areas.
Once a patient is assigned a room, adult patients will be allowed one visitor at a time.
Other hospitals in the Triangle are taking similar precautions as respiratory illnesses are on the rise.
WakeMed, UNC, Duke hospitals limit visitors
Beginning Jan. 2, visitors in all WakeMed hospital patient care areas, including waiting rooms, must be at least 12 years old.
Similar restrictions go into place Jan. 2 for UNC Hospitals’ Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, and Youth Behavioral Health campuses. Visitors 11 and younger are prohibited from all inpatient areas and all waiting rooms. Masks are strongly recommended for staff and encouraged for patients and visitors.
Duke University Health System is limiting visitors to two at a time per patient beginning Jan. 3, and children under 12 are not permitted to visit hospitals or wards without prior approval from health care providers and for special circumstances.
“Each year we see patients, who – whether they realize their symptoms are severe enough yet to be influenza or not – bring that into the hospital. We saw the same thing with COVID. I think where the age restrictions come into it is anyone who has kids or grandkids will know, the younger the child frankly the less they are aware of their symptoms and the less they control where their hands, their secretions, and frankly where their snot goes. They’re just not very good at managing that themselves,” said Wolfe.
Visitors to Duke hospitals are urged to wear masks and to perform hand washing frequently.
The hospital systems are all asking those with fever or respiratory illness symptoms – including cough or shortness of breath – to stay home unless seeking treatment by a doctor.
