Via The Province, a report by Helen Branswell of The Canadian Press: With crowded ERs and some cancelled surgeries, flu reminds Canada what it can do. Excerpt:
In some places it's surging, in others it's plateaued, and in other parts of the country it may actually be on the wane.
But in most parts of Canada this winter, influenza has been reminding Canadians what a real flu season feels like.
Emergency departments are reporting heavy traffic. Some hospitals have cut back on surgeries. Sales of antiviral drugs have been strong enough to create the possibility of a shortage, prompting the federal government to lend stores of Tamiflu from the national emergency drug stockpile back to the manufacturer, Roche Canada.
After a couple of years of ho-hum flu seasons, some people may be tempted to cast this year as the worst in a decade. This early in the winter it's too soon to predict what the final picture will look like. But it is fair to say this is an active year, flu-wise.
"I think we may have forgotten what real influenza feel like, because for whatever reasons in the post-pandemic period, for us anyway in B.C. the seasons have been quite mild," Dr. Danuta Skowronski, a flu expert at the BC Centre for Disease Control, said Wednesday.
"This season is more like what we expect from an influenza A — H3 in particular — season."
Skowronski was referring to the fact that much of the illness this year in Canada is being caused by the influenza A virus H3N2. (Flu viruses that infect humans are mainly from either the influenza A or B family. There are two subtypes of A viruses — H3N2 and H1N1.)
Winters when H3N2 viruses predominate are generally harder flu seasons because this subtype hits the elderly with particular severity.
