Tan Hui Leng, Today Online 1 May 08;
TWO new strains of the flu bug are expected and together with a prevailing strain, they have been identified by the World Health Organisation as being the most likely to cause the flu this year.
On Tuesday, GlaxoSmith-Kline announced that its updated vaccine for the circulating flu strains this year had arrived in Singapore.
This is just as 15,761 cases of acute upper-respiratory infections were reported at polyclinics last week — the second week in a row that the number has breached the warning level.
General practitioners (GPs) told Today they have seen more patients down with the flu recently but attributed it to the seasonal surge. Still, not all patients come down with just a cough and runny nose.
"My impression is that more patients are getting flu complications," said Dr Chong Yeh Woei who has been a GP for 13 years. "The strains seem to be getting stronger in recent years."
The complications include tracheal inflammation, sinusitis, dizziness and, in rare instances, the paralysis of vocal chords due to nerve damage.
Usually, there is an annual flu surge here from April to July and from November to January. Infectious disease doctor Wong Sin Yew said that high-risk patients — the very young, the elderly and the chronically ill — should be vaccinated as they are prone to more serious flu complications.
"This is especially important now as two out of the three influenza strains in this new vaccine are new and those patients vaccinated a year ago would need to be re-vaccinated," he added.
