You may be seeing and listening to many people coughing and sneezing around them at this time.
Because? Well, Canada’s winter Respiratory virus season He lowered a late start and is now in full, the authorities say. That suggests that more people are sick with flu and landing at the hospital compared to previous years.
“We have not seen this amount of influenza cases, as well as a serious illness in almost a decade,” said Dr. Karim Ali, medical director of prevention and control of infections and services of infectious diseases to Niagara health In Ontario.
In Quebec, Dr. Jesse Papenburg, a specialist in infectious diseases at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of McGill, says intensity of this flu season.
“I think this is influenza doing what influenza does, hitting in mid -winter with an intense epidemic,” Papenburg said.
For several years until 2023, he says that between 10 to 20 percent of children admitted to pediatric hospitals for influenza needed intensive care. He also points out that the flu vaccine helps protect children from being infected.
“My recommendations for families is not too late to vaccinate.”
On Friday, the Canada Public Health Agency said the activity of the flu was “generalized” in British, Ontario and Quebec Columbia. In Canada, the flu season usually lasts from November to April.
Rear peak, more disease?
Dawn Bowdish, a professor of Medicine at McMaster University of Hamilton, said the national goals to vaccinate 80 percent of vulnerable peopleas the youngest and older. The objective of absorption of the influenza vaccine is intended to protect people with high risk of infection and complications of respiratory disease, according to the Canada Public Health Agency.
BC Children’s Hospital says that he is seeing an increase in visits to the emergency room this month, and officials are asking parents with sick children to take preliminary measures before a visit to the hospital. The medical columnist of CBC, Dr. Melissa Lem, joins us to discuss the options that parents can consider to avoid a visit to the hospital.
Bowdish, executive director of the Firestone Institute of Respiratory Health, says that Canada has never achieved that goal. “The good news is that in people over 65, we are beginning to increase more than 70 percent,” he said.
Influenza vaccines are also important during pregnancy, he said, to avoid bad results for both pregnancy and women’s health, as well as to transmit mother’s protection to the mother to keep newborns outside the hospital
Other priority groups for flu vaccines include those who have asthma, people with heart conditions, immunocompromised people and anyone who plans to receive chemotherapy for cancer.
Bowdish says that, as with Covid-19 vaccines, decreasing the immunity of flu vaccines in autumn could be playing a role now.
“When the peak arrives later, like February, most people have spent those three months of protection, which could explain why we are seeing so many admissions this year,” he said.
A new report by three doctors says that the persistent cough after the infectious that many Canadians are experiencing this winter will be resolved more frequently over time.
Nationally, the coverage of influenza vaccination in 2023-2024 was 42 percent, almost the same as the previous season. The findings were published in December by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Be attentive to the transition season
Dr. Danuta Skowronski heads epidemiology for influenza in the BC center for disease control and leads an annual study on the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine.
Skowronski says his team discovered that the vaccine reduces the risk of flu diseases that require a medical visit “to half” in mid -January.
The findings of his team based on data from British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, as well as in the National Microbiology Laboratory, were published on January 30 in the Medical Magazine in the Medical Magazine Eurosurveilance.
Skowronski says, a mixture of two subtypes of influenza A, H1 and H3, are circulating this season.
“Last year, it was predominantly an H1 season for us, so seeing a second consecutive season of H1 is a bit unusual,” he said. “But having H1 and H3 suggest that this can be a transition season and that we should be observing the appearance of a kind of dominant variant that can take off.”
In addition to vaccination, Skowronski suggested that people overcome several precautions to avoid infection and disease. For example, if a grandson has a disease similar to the flu, then it may be better to avoid visiting. Or a person with a high risk of complications may consider obtaining a recipe for an antiviral medicine at the beginning of their illness.
She says that her team will continue to closely monitor the effectiveness of the flu vaccine during the rest of the season because a small proportion of proven viruses showed variants that can influence deliberations on the composition of influenza vaccines for the hemisphere North at the World Health Organization meeting in London in London. This month.
