"The greater number of patients who come for examination and treatment at the moment with respiratory viruses or flu are children attending kindergartens and nurseries and students, especially those of preschool age.

The disease is currently gaining strength

, and where parents 

do not want their children to be vaccinated with the main vaccines from the Immunization Calendar, the disease is much more severe

, sometimes fatal cases are reached," 

Dr. Yordan Hristov, cardiologist , told BNR

and a general practitioner at the Lozenets Medical Center Medical Center

.

And Yambol is on the verge of a flu epidemic

"At the moment, mostly 

patients with respiratory and heart diseases

are being admitted , and fortunately 

the Covid pandemic

has subsided . It is normal for China to have more cases of patients with Covid-19, because the population there is also many times larger.

What worries me here in our country is the higher number of people coming in with flu type A and flu type B. The new type B is more severe, longer, with higher fever, muscle aches, cough, symptoms they subside more slowly, it can also be said that complications are more common with it.

In young children, a more severe course and with a higher temperature is especially observed.

This makes people look for a second opinion and visit a specialist more often.

Currently, 

type B occurs more violently

.

The most worrisome complications are pneumonia in the right part of the lung

 - right-sided pneumonia.

they were very characteristic of covid infections.

Therefore, the first thing we do in the current tense flu situation is to send 

patients to do the combined tests first

 - so that there is no hysteria,

 to know whether it is flu or Covid

, and to be able to start the most accurate treatment and that the people are calm too," said Dr. Hristov.

He also shared that, 

without a test, specialists and general practitioners are definitely having difficulty with how to approach 

prescribing therapy, because of the various viral infections that are circulating now.

Therefore, the test is of primary importance, then comes imaging or blood tests.

"And 

our practice is very busy

. We have about 3,000 patients, but 

the situation, especially in Sofia, is very busy, and traditionally in the winter months there is panic

...

The disease in children varies a lot

 - both the youngest children and the oldest are sick.

But because of the contact of these groups with the people of active age, in the end 

they also get sick - the working people at the age of 40-45

.

Because the disease is transmitted.

We still cannot explain 

why this pneumonia appears more often in the right part of the lung

 as a condition.

But it is certain that the

 patients who more often reach complications after a viral infection are those with accompanying diseases

, such as cardiovascular, with rhythm conduction disorders, but 

the most threatened by the flu wave are the patients with COPD

 (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease of the heart), with asthma and lung diseases, with respiratory failure.

Those patients 

who have received a vaccine - anti-influenza, against Covid-19, children with a full cycle of the Immunization Calendar, are less ill

, said Dr. Yordan Hristov from "Lozenets" UMBAL.

According to Dr. Hristov, there is a huge difference in how diseases progress in vaccinated and non-vaccinated patients. 

In non-vaccinated people, they proceed quite aggressively, very severe symptoms develop, in children they can have convulsions, and in adults with pneumonia, and the patients experience it much more severely.

And the NHS has provided free flu vaccines

 for the oldest people, and free vaccines from the Immunization Calendar for young children.

Vaccinated elderly people come to us against influenza and they only have a runny nose, complaints of the upper respiratory tract and sore throat.

Dr. Hristov also commented on 

the topic of the missing drugs Pulmicort and Ventolin, as well as antibiotics

.

According to him, the reason for this is that many of the parents, who are used to these medicines for the respiratory tract in children, stock up during the winter.

"Every winter and 

with every pandemic boom, medicines disappear

. One reason is 

overstocking, the other is the lack of sufficient stock, or the export 

of these medicines to other countries. But the pharmacy network is very large, and if something disappears, it will be for a short time period," said Dr. Hristov.

Regarding 

antibiotics and whether there is a shortage in the pharmacy network

, he pointed out that there are always substitutes for a given type of antibiotic, many of them are also broad-spectrum, and one drug could be replaced with another that has the same characteristics. 

The problem is that treating viral infections with antibiotics is wrong

 and should not be done.

"

I have not observed a problem with

antibiotics. A certain antibiotic may be missing in a small pharmacy, but there is always an opportunity to replace it with another, but with the same active ingredient, the pharmacists know this," explained the general practitioner.

"On the question

 of providing beds for hospitalization of children with respiratory diseases

, beds can always be restructured and a way out found. On the other hand,

 in connection with the large influx of patients - there are cases in which the child is taken to the hospital late

. he is treated at home, over the phone, he waits, and he gets worse. There is also the other situation - the 

child only has snot, but the parents want to hospitalize him

. And he 

has a developed health policy in this aspect

 - first you are referred for an examination at the child's general practitioner, or to the MC, if it is on a non-working day or at night, then a specialist assesses whether this child should be hospitalized. In most cases, parents take the children directly to the hospital, or to the emergency room, that is 

triage is not done and there is an accumulation of people

... And the composition of the medical teams is not infinite ...

What I would advise parents when their child is sick is to stay calm.

Because both I and my colleagues observe that parents come more and more often panicked and nervous, regardless of what the illness is, they want everything to happen right away.

Which is understandable for a parent, but that's not how medicine works.

There are basic things that must be observed - diagnostics, research, etc.

From the beginning of next week 

, post-covid packages will be available in Lozenets UMBAL

, which will be available to patients who have passed the 

coronavirus infection and passed the flu

.

The reason is that many of the complications of Covid - 19 appear to be long-term.

Therefore, it is good to follow up patients months after the illness, because it 

may have led to the worsening of their existing main diseases - cardiovascular, respiratory or endocrine

.

The most common condition after Covid-19 is

 arrhythmias or the so-called

atrial fibrillation.

This is followed by hypertension, respiratory failure, shortness of breath, asthmatic attacks, neurological and cerebrovascular accidents and thrombosis.

Because 

the worst thing about a viral disease is

the disability it can lead to.

And this is what we want to avoid and we have set it as a 

goal at Medical Center - Lozenets - the prevention of our patients, as well as the quality follow

 -up of patients discharged from Lozenets Hospital.

The packages

 were developed after a thorough consultation by a multidisciplinary team from Lozenets Hospital.

They include advanced blood biochemical tests, imaging studies of the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems.

Dr. Hristov expects, 

if there are no surprises, that the flu wave will end at the end of February

 and the beginning of March.