The flu hit French-speaking Switzerland earlier and more severely than the rest of the country. In Neuchâtel, patients should only go to the emergency room in serious cases.
In addition to the flu epidemic, hospitals in western Switzerland are particularly troubled by skiing accidents.
Gaëtan Bally / Keystone
It almost seems as if the flu is currently confined to language borders: French-speaking Switzerland is sometimes colored deep blue on the national map in the Federal Office of Public Health’s influenza monitoring. Initially, the cantons of Neuchâtel, Vaud and Geneva were particularly affected by the seasonal flu wave. The rest of the country, on the other hand, is colored the lightest blue or even gray – there are hardly any or no (Appenzell Innerrhoden) reported cases here.
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The four Neuchâtel hospitals are constantly at the limit these days because of the flu and other factors. On Tuesday, the traffic light system on the Neuchâtel hospital network website was red for two emergency rooms. On Wednesday, the situation eased, but the traffic light of the children’s emergency room in the city of Neuchâtel changed to red.
Ski accidents, vacations, flu
This year, everything came together, says Claire Charmel, president of the RHNe hospital network: the snow and the slippery conditions, meaning skiing and other accidents, plus the flu and other winter viruses. And that in the middle of the general practitioners’ Christmas holidays. The situation was similar at the four locations of the Freiburg Cantonal Hospital. The result: the hospitals were overrun at the beginning of the year.
In Neuchâtel, the authorities therefore called for people to only go to the emergency room in life-threatening situations. Masks are again required to be worn in hospital care areas in order to slow the spread of viruses, including Covid-19. In addition, the hospitals have opened a reserve unit and set up additional beds in patient rooms, says management president Charmel. The number of beds has been expanded by around 10 percent, to 420.
The measures correspond to the typical winter mode of the Neuchâtel hospitals, in which they will now remain for several weeks. According to Claire Charmel, the situation has not been as tense since the reorganization. But one problem remains: Because there are not enough places in retirement and nursing homes, around 50 people cannot currently be released from the hospitals. So they are blocking urgently needed beds.
Retirement homes have too few places
The situation is similar elsewhere in French-speaking Switzerland. Seven hospitals surveyed by radio station RTS in western Switzerland said on Monday that they would actually like to discharge 375 patients, but could not. In most cases this is due to a lack of places in retirement and nursing homes. In total, 600 seniors in Vaud alone were waiting to move into a retirement home.
In Vaud, the hospital departments for medicine, surgery and traumatology are currently busier than usual, as the health department reports. When it comes to emergency rooms, the Riviera-Chablais hospital at the mouth of the Rhone stands out. Instead of the usual maximum of 130 patients per day, there are now up to 160 patients, the hospital says. This is also mainly due to the flu and skiing accidents.
Vaud therefore activated the highest level four of its system to relieve the burden on hospitals on Friday. The health department can therefore intervene to make it easier to transfer patients to other facilities. The authorities are also appealing to the population to contact their family doctor, pediatrician or on-call doctor first if they have health problems.
So far, all those involved have emphasized that neither the flu wave nor the strain on hospitals is exceptionally severe; it is a typical winter phenomenon. However, the flu epidemic started earlier this year than last year and in many other years.
The Swiss influenza monitoring, which received its weekly update on Wednesday afternoon, shows how dynamic the situation is: It documents the relaxation in Neuchâtel – and now reports the highest number of infections in Switzerland for the previously relatively spared Jura. In addition, Basel City is now colored bright blue on the national map. Since the seasonal flu wave is already in full swing in Germany, German-speaking Switzerland is likely to soon be more severely affected.
