Canada is on track to face its first full flu season in several years, a season that starts earlier than usual, as the country’s fitness formula is already suffering from respiratory infections such as COVID-19 and RSV.
It’s unclear how the coming months will play out, adding what point of strain severe flu infections will put on battered hospitals, and how this year’s list of viruses now that SARS-CoV-2 is firmly in the mix.
But what’s transparent is that there is already a sharp accumulation of recent infections and a “tidal wave” of cases is likely, said Dr. Sameer Elsayed, an infectious disease physician and medical microbiologist in London, Ontario, and a professor at the University of the West.
“We’re going to have a flu season, I think, this year. “
Nationally, flu activity has “increased considerably” and crossed the seasonal threshold of 5% of samples that tested positive in late October. If those results continue, the government will affirm the beginning of an influenza outbreak in Canada. in its next update, scheduled for November 14.
Ontario has already surpassed that benchmark, with about 10 matching the hundred of tests recently conducted for this year’s dominant influenza A strain.
In Public Health Ontario’s most recent Nov. 4 update, the province said flu season began “more than a month earlier than is typically seen in pre-pandemic seasons. “
This early start comes as the province’s pediatric hospitals are already teeming with children with illnesses such as respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and positive COVID-19 test results have risen again, recently reaching 17 percent.
“In the coming months, Ontario is very likely to face triple risk of respiratory disease,” said Dr. Brown. Rose Zacharias, president of the Ontario Medical Association, a physician advocacy group, at a press convention Wednesday.
Alberta also began reveling in an increase in influenza A cases in late October, along with the flow of other pathogens, and British Columbia. Public health officials are also tracking an ongoing accumulation of positive samples.
“Right now, we’re seeing the spread of flu and samples are coming to long-term care facilities, children’s hospitals and adult hospitals,” said medical microbiologist Dr. Anna S. Simpson. Linda Hoang, associate director and program leader of the bacteriology and mycology laboratory at B. C. Center for Disease Control.
The progression of Canada’s flu season from here could reflect, to some extent, what countries in the southern hemisphere experienced earlier this year.
In Chile, where the 2022 flu season ended, influenza A began circulating “months earlier” than pre-pandemic flu seasons, according to a recent report released through the U. S. Centers for Disease Control. U. S. (U. S. )It has also had an early start, with southern states experiencing the most powerful surges. )
Chilean authorities reported more than 1,000 hospitalizations during the season. This is higher than the COVID pandemic when public fitness restrictions and other points kept the flu at bay for more than a year, but it’s less than pre-pandemic flu seasons. The country’s flu vaccines have also cut the threat of hospitalization by nearly half.
Data on laboratory-confirmed influenza cases in Australia this year also show that the country has experienced an early start and end in its flu season, and a much higher point of infections than any of the past five years.
But the clinical severity of the 2022 flu season, which refers to the total number of deaths and the proportion of patients admitted to intensive care, was deemed “low” through the Australian government.
WATCH | Ontario doctors warn of a “triple threat” breathing season:
So what will those trends bring to Canada in the coming months?
Alyson Kelvin, a virologist and researcher at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, said it’s imaginable that our flu season can also “peak and slow down” faster.
But he noted that the combination of influenza and other respiratory viruses, adding the first flow of COVID in the winter months without public health restrictions, makes the generation ahead difficult to predict.
It’s possible that the early start of the flu season in the Southern Hemisphere, which is now mirrored in countries further north, suggests the virus is moving through the stream after other waves of infections.
“It’s possible we’ll see an upcoming backlog of COVID-19 cases, maybe in early January,” Kelvin said. “But it may also just be the backlash of not having noticed the flu in recent years; I do not know. And I’ll be looking at the numbers to see a clearer trend in the coming years. “
Hospital groups fear that other waves of viral infections could mean months of strain on the Canadian health system, whether or not flu cases account for the highest levels of hospitalizations this season.
“It’s in November,” said Dr. Fahad Razak, an internist at St. Brown. Fahad Razak. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, in an interview on CBC News Network.
“The respiratory virus season, adding influenza and RSV, but of course also COVID, is expected to peak in the coming months. So, we probably haven’t seen how much worse it will get. “
The next few months may be “very, very difficult,” he added, given the already long wait times for care at many battered and unstaffed hospitals across the country.
Given those concerns, an increasing number of doctors are now asking to return to the undermask dressed to mitigate the spread of viral infections.
WATCH | Toronto doctor calls for mask orders to be revoked:
“If you add to the other layers of protection, adding vaccination can make all the difference in terms of mitigating the outbreak so hospitals can cope a little better,” said Canada’s director of public health, Dr. Anna S. Simpson. Theresa Tam. press conference on Thursday.
A study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine presented more evidence suggesting that face masks could help mitigate transmission of the virus. more COVID cases including 1,000 students and staff members in the months following the completion of a state policy.
Masks are a blunt tool, Razak said, but they also helped keep the flu at bay in Canada for much of the pandemic.
The 2020 flu season ended after a series of public fitness restrictions were put in place to fight COVID, and there was also no evidence of flu flow online the following season.
The flu is generally believed to kill thousands of Canadians a year, while COVID ultimately kills many in either one week or both.
Getting a vaccine to oppose either is paramount this fall, several medical experts said in recent interviews with CBC News.
According to Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization, it’s even getting a COVID vaccine and an annual flu shot at the same appointment.
Kelvin, who has long studied influenza, said Canadians will have to take the risk of getting the flu seriously.
The additional concern now, he said, is that it will return as long as there is respiratory virus, SARS-CoV-2, now in the mix.
“This will be charged into the building in cases of serious illness,” he said. “And that’s what I need to pay attention to: that we’re doing everything we can to decrease respiratory virus transmission in the community. “
Senior Health and Medical Journalist
Lauren Pelley covers fitness and medical sciences for CBC News, adding the global spread of infectious diseases, Canadian fitness policy and pandemic preparedness. In: lauren. pelley@cbc. ca
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