A remote Northern Territory Indigenous community is medically evacuating two residents a day as the Top End deals with a "tsunami" of flu cases during its worst outbreak in years.
For the past week, one or two people have been flown out of Maningrida — 370 kilometres from Darwin on the north coast of Arnhem Land — each day due to a severe outbreak of influenza.
"These are unprecedented numbers in volumes per day," local health clinic manager Jessica Gatti said.
"You're in the thick of it, and you just deal with what turns up, but those evacuations are on top of our normal core business."
Ms Gatti said the number of people showing up looking for medical care had doubled.
"The flu season definitely has come a lot earlier and a lot harder than was anticipated, so we didn't have the opportunity to do a mass vaccination," she said.
Ms Gatti said the clinic had also run out of a drug that helped relieve symptoms of influenza, but the federal government was able to provide more after 48 hours.
She said management of the flu outbreak was much different to COVID-19.
"With COVID-19, there had been so much pre-preparation going into it and we had so many policies and procedures and workflows around how we were going to internally manage an outbreak," Ms Gatti said.
"The flu outbreak is definitely worse in the sense that it's a huge strain on the staffing and on the patients in that [we're] trying to see them all in a timely manner.
"Staff are just seeing far more patient loads than they normally would."
A spokesperson for the NT Department of Health said it had a plan in place to combat seasonal flu, including "reconfiguring resources as required", but did not provide details of what it involved.
Health workers 'caught off guard'
The spokesperson said there had been 2,162 recorded cases of flu across the NT this season, with 140 people admitted to hospital.
There were 76 cases of flu recorded last year, when five patients were admitted to hospital.
Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory chief executive John Paterson said Maningrida was not the only community struggling to contain outbreaks of influenza.
He said the flu season normally peaked in August or September in the NT.
There have been no recorded deaths from the flu outbreak but Mr Paterson said many symptoms were worse than COVID-19.
"It's probably a little more severe than what they had with COVID. It's lasting a bit longer," he said.
