According to the weekly report of Epidemiological Surveillance of the Balearic Islands, the overall incidence rate of acute respiratory infections (ARI), in the third week of 2024, begins a downward curve for the first time since the middle of last December, with a rate of 242 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, almost 37 points below last week, in which the archipelago reached 279 cases/100,000 h.

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Respiratory virus incidence rate falls

The weekly incidence rate of ARI since week 49 of 2023 in the Balearic Islands had followed an upward trend to reach 279 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last week (week 2/2024). According to the Epidemiological Surveillance report of the General Directorate of Public Health published today, this upward trend is broken for the first time in the third week of the year, dropping to 242 cases per 100,000, which places the Balearic Islands in a low incidence bracket.

This confirms that the Balearic Islands corroborate the same downward trend as the rest of Spain, which in week 3/2024 maintains the continued decline in influenza activity throughout the territory. At the national level, the overall rate decreases to 717.3 cases/100,000 h. (933.3 in the previous week) and the decrease is observed in all communities, according to the weekly epidemiological report of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III.

Regarding the seasonal influenza epidemic, the Balearic Islands are still at a low level of intensity, according to the thresholds based on the statistics of the ten previous epidemic seasons. Thus, after the readjustment made in the calculation of influenza rates to update the information received in the Epidemiology Service from the sentinel professionals and the Laboratory, the estimate of the overall influenza rate would go from 107 cases/100,000 inhabitants in week 2/2024 to 109.4 cases/100,000 inhabitants in week 3/2024, remaining at the low intensity threshold. Meanwhile, the overall rate of COVID-19 in the community stands at 15.9 cases and that of respiratory syncytial virus remains at 8.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.