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Trinity Hospital announced new hospital visitation restrictions Sunday due to concerns over the increase in flu-like illnesses in the region.

The new restrictions include limiting visitation to the patient's significant other or spouse only in the Family Birth Center, and to the child's parents only in the Pediatrics Unit.

Visitors to any unit of the hospital must be older than 18 and visitation is limited to family members only, with no more than two visitors at a time allowed. People experiencing flu-like symptoms or colds are advised not to visit the hospital.

"Of note, statistically across the country, these are the highest volume of people that are getting ill the obstetric and pediatric population more so than some of our other community members, so that's why it's important to protect those individuals," said Brenda Lokken, infection control coordinator for Trinity Health.

"It's (visitation restriction) always a measure that you want to consider when you're dealing with a condition that's infectious and it affects the community at large. It's for the safety of patients, so we aren't putting an increased risk on them," she added.

Randy Schwan, spokesman for Trinity Health, explained that the visitation restriction was based on the recommendation of health-care providers. The visitation restriction will be evaluated on a daily and weekly basis, he added, and will be kept in place as the situation warrants it.

Trinity Health has seen an increase in outpatient visits for people experiencing flu-like illness, both in the ER and at the clinic. Schwan encouraged people with flu-like illness to seek clinic care in the event that the illness isn't an immediate emergency.

"This weekend, we did have a record volume of patients accessing our ER. A chunk of those had flu-like illnesses, but most of them did not. We're not being inundated with flu patients, but because we have seen that the number of patient visits for flu are increasing, we encourage those who don't need to be in the ER to try to get an appointment with your primary care provider," Schwan said.

"The ER should be used for people who are very ill. Those who are mildly ill should manage the illness at home and through their primary care provider," Lokken added.