Albury hospital’s emergency department treated 23 patients with asthma on Sunday night, two of those needing to be admitted for further treatment.

Greater Southern Area Health Service issued an asthma alert yesterday with high pollen counts and thunderstorms expected to continue across the region.

Director of public health Tracey Oakman said thunderstorms during spring can trigger attacks even in people who have not been diagnosed with asthma.

“A period of warm sunny weather in late spring can produce high pollen counts,” she said.

“When this pollen is picked up and broken into tiny fragments by the storm, we have the right conditions for an epidemic or thunderstorm-related asthma,” she said.

Albury hospital’s respiratory care co-ordinator Maureen Klinberg said the asthma patients on Sunday night were mostly adults aged between 20 and 30.

“I think it would be more than we would have had into the emergency department after a thunderstorm for quite some years,” she said.

“So the message is to stay indoors in a thunderstorm event with the windows shut and if you’ve got reliever medication, that’s usually Ventolin, take that as needed.

“Of course, if people are still concerned, they should call an ambulance and come into hospital.”

Pharmacist manager at Wodonga Guardian Pharmacy Dave Whittle said there has also been an increase in the incidence of hay fever on the Border.

“There’s been a lot of hay fever over the last few days or week or so and that often triggers asthma in people and as a result we’ve had quite a large influx of people with symptoms of hay fever – runny nose, watery eyes, sneezing and wheezing, which indicates it’s asthma related,” he said.

“There’s not normally such a great influx, it’s a continual flow of people in the hay fever season from October onwards through to January, February. But I think probably the weather (on Sunday) was particularly bad.”