January 27, 2014 - NORTH AMERICA - Achy, shaky, hot and cold? Didja get a flu shot? Didja? “We’re seeing a lot of influenza, just like nationwide,” Lee County Health Department Administrator Cathy Ferguson said. The same is true in Whiteside County, health department officials there said. And like the rest of the nation, the H1N1, or swine flu strain, is back, Ferguson said. Typical influenza hits infants and people older than 65 the hardest.
H1N1, which caused a nationwide pandemic in 2009, tends to expand that pool to young adults, pregnant women, older children, and people with chronic diseases. Although health officials are seeing about the usual number of cases for this time of year, they are seeing it in more people younger than 65, said Joan Saunders, Whiteside County’s head of infectious diseases. Statewide, at least seven people, most in Cook County, have died this season, while 450 have been hospitalized, Illinois Department of Public Health spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said Thursday. The flu has put at least a couple of people in the hospital in Lee County, Ferguson said. The state notifies her office of confirmed cases only when they’re bad enough to put the victim in ICU – the only cases required to be reported to the Department of Public Health, she said. Those 450 cases are barely the tip of the iceberg, though, since most people suffer through the illness alone, many without seeing a doctor. Although the season is nearly half over, it’s not too late to get immunized. The Department of Public Health recommends anyone 6 months and older get a flu shot, since the more people vaccinated, the less likely it is to spread. Vaccines, including the flu mist, still are available at the Lee County Health Department, Ferguson said. Whiteside County, which has given more than 3,000 vaccines this season, is out, though, and so is advising people to go to their local pharmacies or physicians, Saunders said. The vaccine takes about 2 weeks to take effect, so sooner is better than later. And if you do get achy, shaky, hot and cold? “Stay home!” Saunders said. -
Sauk Valley.
H1N1 Fears Spur Extra Flu Vaccine Demand.
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Community Health Nurse Amy Beck injects a patient with a H1N1 vaccine during a flu shot program
in Calgary on Oct. 26, 2009. (Jeff McIntosh/THE CANADIAN PRESS) |
Canada will ship out more influenza vaccine this season than it has since the H1N1 pandemic swept the country four years ago, with nearly every province and territory placing late-season orders to satisfy a surprising surge in demand for the flu shot. The 2013-2014 season marks the first time since the pandemic that Canada has been forced to track down extra vaccine, above and beyond a five-per-cent cushion built into the country’s contracts with vaccine makers, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
“With this season – for whatever reason and we can only theorize – but there has been a lot more uptake, a lot more demand by Canadians,” said Dr. Gregory Taylor, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer. Only Nova Scotia and Nunavut declined to snap up more vaccine when Ottawa secured more than 400,000 extra doses earlier this month, according to an informal survey by The Globe and Mail. Newfoundland and Labrador increased its vaccine supply by the largest amount – 62 per cent – by requesting an extra 80,000 doses on top of the 130,000 it ordered at the start of the influenza season. Saskatchewan and Manitoba were not far behind, increasing their stockpiles by 53 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively. Canada had already ordered approximately 10.8 million doses at the start of the season, about the same size of the order it placed at the beginning of the 2010-2011 season and more than any year since, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). The demand is particularly puzzling because, as public health officials have been stressing, this has been a typical flu season. That raises a question that is as difficult to answer as the flu virus is to predict: What makes Canadians clamour for flu shots one year and eschew them the next? “It’s really quite unusual,” Dr. Michael Gardam, one of the country’s top flu specialists, said of the late-season purchases. “It’s been a very average season. ”
The prevalence of H1N1 this year could explain the surge, experts say. More than 90 per cent of the flu cases detected this year have been H1N1, now considered a regular seasonal flu virus. Some provinces have been hit harder than others: Saskatchewan, for instance, announced Friday that 16 people in the province had died of the H1N1 strain of the flu, one more than in the pandemic season of 2009-2010. “The word H1N1 is scarier than regular flu and that drives demand,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Toronto’s Mount Sinai hospital. H1N1 also tends to strike people between the ages of 20 and 64. Last year, H3N2 dominated and hit more seniors. Both strains are included in this year’s flu vaccine, along with a type of influenza B. Media reports of adults in this younger age group contracting the flu, falling seriously ill and dying, prompted a stampede to flu clinics, particularly in the western provinces in the last week of December and first week of January. “It was the spike after Christmas in H1N1, the shift in morbidity and mortality to a younger age group and the media attention that that garnered,” said Dr. Perry Kendall, the provincial health officer for British Columbia. Still, January and February are not the best time to get the flu shot. Full protection does not kick in until two weeks after the shot is administered. Those who receive the vaccine today would have gone unshielded through much of the flu season. “Waiting until that moment to get your flu shot, it’s not entirely worthless, but frankly there’s a reasonable chance it’s not going to help you much,” said Dr. Gardam, who is the director of infection prevention and control at Toronto’s University Health Network. “The analogy I give is, you’ve never bought fire insurance, now your drapes are on fire and you’re frantically calling State Farm. You’re kind of too late.” -
The Globe and Mail.
California Deaths From H1N1 Rise To 146.
Influenza claimed 50 more young lives in California this week, proving that a potent virus that arrived a virtual stranger in 2009 has gained the lead role in our winter dance with the disease. The H1N1 virus -- the swine flu bug -- is circulating through susceptible groups, especially among a younger generation that often goes without vaccinations and had not been exposed to this strain, health authorities said Friday. H1N1 has largely replaced last year's H3N2 strain and has already killed nearly 40 percent more people than last year's total, even though flu season has yet to reach its peak.
In California, it has claimed the lives of 95 adults younger than 65, and 51 more deaths await confirmation as flu related. That would bring the total to 146 deaths, state epidemiologist Dr. Gil Chavez reported at a Friday news conference. The nine Bay Area counties and Santa Cruz County have reported 32 flu-related deaths this season. That's a pattern similar to what was seen when H1N1 last circled the globe. "The elderly, like in 2009, are not overwhelmingly getting infected," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "They are seemingly protected from it." In contrast, at this time last year, H3N2 dominated and killed many elders -- but only nine deaths were reported among Californians under 65. The state does not track flu deaths for residents over 65, so information about the impact on that age group is mostly anecdotal. Among this year's victims were 23-year-old Matthew Walker, of Santa Rosa, a healthy young man who enjoyed windsurfing and skateboarding. The experience of losing a son, his father, Cliff Walker, told NBC Bay Area, was "a ragged roller coaster ride, with a bad ending."
All but one of this year's deaths have been linked to the H1N1 virus. Most occurred in Californians who, unlike Walker, had a pre-existing medical condition, such as chronic heart disease, asthma or a suppressed immune system, or were pregnant, according to Chavez. One of the newly reported deaths was a child who lived in Riverside County. In all, the illness has claimed the lives of three children under age 10, including one in San Mateo County. Despite such tragedies, the good news is that H1N1 is less deadly than it was during the peak of the 2009 pandemic, and that is because we're better protected, Fauci said. It is one of the strains included in the current flu vaccine, which usually shields people exposed to the virus. And many who have been sick before have developed antibodies to it. There are several reasons why younger people seem so vulnerable. Significantly, as a group, they are less likely to be vaccinated than elders. Some scientists think the genetic structure of H1N1 targets the lungs, while H3N2 tended to attack the upper respiratory system. A mutation in an amino acid called D225G might allow H1N1 to bind more effectively to lung cells, making us more susceptible to pneumonia and death. And younger people may have not acquired immunity through previous exposure. Forms of the H1N1 virus were detected in the 1930s, then in the mid-1950s and again in 1971, according to flu tracker and biomedical researcher Henry Niman of the Pennsylvania company Recombinomics, Inc. It appeared again -- in significantly altered form -- in 2009. This year, more than 95 percent of the circulating flu viruses are H1N1, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention That's much higher than in any of the previous three flu seasons. "It has knocked the other strains off the map," said Fauci. -
Mercury News.
Flu Deaths In Saskatchewan Hit 16, Surpass Pandemic Year.
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The number of flu-related deaths in Saskatchewan is up to 16 from 12,
surpassing the number of people
who died in the 2009 pandemic.
| shutterstock
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The number of flu-related deaths in Saskatchewan is up to 16 from 12, surpassing the number of people who died in the 2009 pandemic. Fifteen people died in Saskatchewan during that H1N1 outbreak. Dr. Denise Werker, the province's deputy medical health officer, says there have been more than 1,100 lab confirmed cases of flu this year and 57 people have been admitted to intensive care. "What we are seeing is an incredible toll this season in terms of influenza and that is related most likely to the H1N1 virus, the strain that is circulating this season," she said Friday. There's an unusual shift in the people affected, Werker added. "What's interesting in terms of the admissions and deaths is that men are two times more likely to have been admitted to intensive care and to die as compared to women," she said. "And that risk is not experienced in the laboratory confirmations where we have a ratio that's 50-50 between men and women. For some reason, men seem to be more at risk for being admitted to hospital with severe illness and also to die."
Werker said there is no concrete evidence as to why men are dying more than women. She speculates that it might be because men are less likely to get vaccinated or could be more genetically predisposed. There is always the question of an underlying health condition as well. Werker noted that none of the 16 people who died were vaccinated. About 75 per cent of them had other health issues. The people who were admitted to intensive care or who died range in age from under one to 86 years old. The average age is mid-50s, she said. The doctor said she is puzzled to see the numbers in Saskatchewan, because other provinces don't seem to be having the same experience. But that might just be because Saskatchewan is more timely in reporting cases than other jurisdictions, she suggested. The flu season has probably peaked in Saskatchewan overall, Werker said, but she cautioned that influenza is just beginning to take off in the northern part of the province. "My concern is that we have just peaked and that we may get more deaths on the other side of the slope," she said. "We have an enormous opportunity to prevent more deaths by people getting vaccinated. During pandemic, our vaccine coverage rates were 50 per cent. "We have not achieved that this season." -
Huffington Post.
5 More Flu Deaths Reported In San Diego.
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| Courtesy: County News Center. |
Influenza activity in the region remains elevated, and five more deaths
have been reported, the County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA)
announced Thursday. The new flu-related deaths raise the total
reported locally this season to 12. The people who died ranged in age
from 35 to 91 years old and all had underlying medical conditions. Last
season, 65 flu-related deaths were reported in the county. For the week ending January 18, 2014, HHSA reported the following:
- Emergency
department visits for influenza-like illness: 10 percent of visits
(down from 11 percent the previous week; the figure has been revised
since the last report)
- Lab-confirmed influenza cases for the
week: 545 (down from 704 the previous week; the figure has been revised
since the last report)
- Total lab-confirmed influenza cases to date this season: 1,965
The latest statistics involving children as of January 23, 2014:
- 11 patients are currently at Rady Children’s Hospital with influenza.
- 2 patients have been admitted into the ICU (Intensive Care Unit).
- In the Emergency Department, approximately 10-15% of patients we are seeing have influenza or influenza-like illness.
- Since January 1, 13 patients have been admitted to our Intensive Care Unit with Influenza.
- Since January 1, almost a quarter of the patients we have tested for influenza have been admitted to the hospital.
“Influenza
is widespread in San Diego and if you have not gotten vaccinated it’s
not too late to do it,” said Wilma Wooten, M.D., M.P.H., County public
health officer. “The predominant influenza virus circulating in San
Diego this season is Pandemic H1N1. This is similar to the flu seen in
other parts of the country.” Compared to last season, a
significantly higher proportion of young and middle-aged adults are
being reported with flu, which is expected with H1N1. More San Diegans
have required intensive care for influenza than at this time last year,
with 92 cases reported so far this season. There were 116 intensive
care cases reported for all of last season. -
Patch.
H1N1 Cases Hit Central Mexico.
The state of San Luis Potosà has registered the largest number of H1N1 influenza cases so far this flu season at 250 cases, followed by Jalisco with 219, Nuevo León with 109, Mexico City with 104 and Mexico State with 91, the Health Secretariat reported on Saturday. Nevertheless, the 4 percent death rate from the H1N1 influenza in San Luis Potosà remains less than half the national average of 8.8 percent. The Health Secretariat reported that 10 people have died from H1N1 influenza in San Luis Potosà — up from five the previous week. In Hidalgo, 12 people have died from the disease and 86 have been infected, despite the fact that the previous week the Health Secretariat had reported only 23 infections and two deaths. Hidalgo Health Subsecretary Ana MarÃa Tavares advised people to immediately see a doctor if they have a fever of more than 39°C (102°F), as well as if they present symptoms such as difficulty breathing and coughing, adding that those who died from the disease waited three days to see a doctor after their symptoms first appeared. According to Tavares, between Jan. 1 and 24, 92 flu cases have been registered in Hidalgo, of which 86 correspond to the H1N1 strain. She added that six of the 12 people who have died of the disease were treated at hospitals managed by the Health Secretariat, with the other six at the hospitals run by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). Public health authorities say that cold weather is helping spread the flu and other respiratory ailments, adding that the numbers are expected to go up in the coming days. One of the disease control strategies that the Hidalgo Health Secretariat has employed to fight the disease is to install vaccination centers in shopping malls and transit centers in the cities of Pachuca and Tulancingo. -
The News.
