With flu cases surging significantly across the UK, The Guardian engaged in a conversation with Amir Hassan, an emergency medicine consultant and the divisional medical director at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, to gain insights into the situation.

“We’re witnessing a notable increase in patients, many of whom are presenting with respiratory illnesses. This necessitates efforts to isolate and treat them effectively, as they often arrive with symptoms like shortness of breath and coughing,” Hassan explained.

As the number of respiratory cases rises, the usual influx of patients experiencing falls, heart attacks, and trauma continues unabated. This dual demand places a strain on emergency departments and wards, as managing a growing number of respiratory patients adds to the existing pressures.

Hassan further highlighted a common challenge faced by hospitals: the need to isolate respiratory cases to prevent the virus from spreading to other patients. This requirement complicates patient management significantly.

“This winter is particularly challenging,” Hassan noted. “It’s likely one of the toughest we’ve experienced in terms of patient volume, and each trust will face distinct difficulties depending on their infrastructure.”

He pointed out that the age of his hospital’s infrastructure poses additional challenges. “Our trust operates in a very old facility with outdated wards and architecture, which limits our capacity to isolate patients due to insufficient single rooms,” he added.

It’s at the level across most hospitals at the moment where corridor care has been normal. The danger now is corridor care is normalised, and patients are coming in with respiratory infections, which makes it much more challenging to try to maintain your infection control. It is challenging.

I would really recommend to patients, if they’ve got symptoms that would go with the flu or with the cold, to try to stay at home if possible. Do self care, go on to the NHS 111 app or the website. If not, they can always go to their GP or even go to their pharmacy.

In the vast majority of cases, managing the flu is really self-help. Just wait for things to settle down. But if you do need emergency care – you feel extremely short of breath or anything of concern – then, you know, we’re always there in the hospital to take care of people.

It’s affecting all age groups. The vast majority are frail and elderly, because they have less respiratory reserve. But we’re also getting some young patients coming in with the flu and [it’s] hitting them badly.

Flu itself can be a killer. It can be a dangerous disease if it’s not treated appropriately. Elderly people will die, and some young people will die from this as well.

If you are a high-risk individual, all I would say, and for everyone, is make sure you get your immunisations if you’re in one of those categories that has it for free – including school-age children – because then you decrease the risk to your friends and relatives.

The pressure builds up. First and foremost in the emergency departments, and then it goes around the wards.

Everyone works really hard over the winter period and we expect winter is always going to be our busiest period, but it is especially hard. What you have to remember is that when the general public go down, a lot of our nurses and doctors and staff are going down as well.”