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Editor, Senior Moderator
Flu fighting resolutions for 2010
By CHRISTINA SPENCER, Parliamentary Bureau
Last Updated: 25th December 2009, 11:15pm
OTTAWA ? What will happen to the H1N1 influenza in 2010?
The clear, definitive, scientific answer from infectious disease experts is...Um, we don?t know.
They?re being honest. As Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada?s chief public health officer, frequently says of this pandemic, ?it?s entirely unpredictable.? Canadians should keep their wits about them.
Still, Health Canada?s FluWatch surveillance website reports influenza activity from Dec. 5-12, the most recent period for which numbers are available, fell for the fourth week in a row.
?Right now seasonal flu is absent, and H1N1 is pretty much absent. So flu has kind of vanished,? says Dr. Michael Gardam, director of infectious disease prevention and control at the Ontario Agency for Health
Protection and Promotion. But he quickly adds that other viruses could move in ?to fill the void.?
So, here?s one new year?s resolution for the health-conscious Canadian: Get a seasonal flu shot if you can, particularly if you?re over 65.
?If swine flu backs off, will seasonal flu take up the slack? The seasonal flu is not gone; there?s little bits and pieces of it here and there,? says Earl Brown, a specialist in microbiology and immunology at the University of Ottawa.
Here?s a second resolution: Don?t assume H1N1 has been beaten.
Experts don?t know if there will be a so-called ?third wave? of the pandemic.
?The odds are very unlikely? of another big wave, Gardam says. But small towns or other geographic pockets that haven?t been hit at all could still be stricken, he warns.
Butler-Jones is more cautious. ?The new year could bring new surprises, including the possibility of a third wave, which could spread rapidly again across Canada,? he says.
Yet the math doesn?t favour a nasty reprise soon: more than half of Canadians have either received the H1N1 vaccine or the virus, and are immune. There are fewer ?susceptibles? to whom the illness can spread ? at least in its current form.
Which leads to a third resolution: Get your flu shot next year, too.
Viruses can mutate, though this one hasn?t changed much. But pandemic H1N1 will likely be among the components of the seasonal flu shot in the fall of 2010; this virus may well become the dominant seasonal flu.
One last resolution: Keep washing your hands, coughing into your sleeves and trying not to spread illness in 2010.
Thanks to public education campaigns, people have learned a lot this year about how to protect themselves from respiratory infections, says Dr.
Gerald Evans, the Kingston, Ont.-based president of the Association of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada.
?Hopefully, they will continue to incorporate all those good habits into what they do in their day-to-day life.?
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/canada/2009/12/25/12268431.html
By CHRISTINA SPENCER, Parliamentary Bureau
Last Updated: 25th December 2009, 11:15pm
OTTAWA ? What will happen to the H1N1 influenza in 2010?
The clear, definitive, scientific answer from infectious disease experts is...Um, we don?t know.
They?re being honest. As Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada?s chief public health officer, frequently says of this pandemic, ?it?s entirely unpredictable.? Canadians should keep their wits about them.
Still, Health Canada?s FluWatch surveillance website reports influenza activity from Dec. 5-12, the most recent period for which numbers are available, fell for the fourth week in a row.
?Right now seasonal flu is absent, and H1N1 is pretty much absent. So flu has kind of vanished,? says Dr. Michael Gardam, director of infectious disease prevention and control at the Ontario Agency for Health
Protection and Promotion. But he quickly adds that other viruses could move in ?to fill the void.?
So, here?s one new year?s resolution for the health-conscious Canadian: Get a seasonal flu shot if you can, particularly if you?re over 65.
?If swine flu backs off, will seasonal flu take up the slack? The seasonal flu is not gone; there?s little bits and pieces of it here and there,? says Earl Brown, a specialist in microbiology and immunology at the University of Ottawa.
Here?s a second resolution: Don?t assume H1N1 has been beaten.
Experts don?t know if there will be a so-called ?third wave? of the pandemic.
?The odds are very unlikely? of another big wave, Gardam says. But small towns or other geographic pockets that haven?t been hit at all could still be stricken, he warns.
Butler-Jones is more cautious. ?The new year could bring new surprises, including the possibility of a third wave, which could spread rapidly again across Canada,? he says.
Yet the math doesn?t favour a nasty reprise soon: more than half of Canadians have either received the H1N1 vaccine or the virus, and are immune. There are fewer ?susceptibles? to whom the illness can spread ? at least in its current form.
Which leads to a third resolution: Get your flu shot next year, too.
Viruses can mutate, though this one hasn?t changed much. But pandemic H1N1 will likely be among the components of the seasonal flu shot in the fall of 2010; this virus may well become the dominant seasonal flu.
One last resolution: Keep washing your hands, coughing into your sleeves and trying not to spread illness in 2010.
Thanks to public education campaigns, people have learned a lot this year about how to protect themselves from respiratory infections, says Dr.
Gerald Evans, the Kingston, Ont.-based president of the Association of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada.
?Hopefully, they will continue to incorporate all those good habits into what they do in their day-to-day life.?
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/canada/2009/12/25/12268431.html