The so-called holiday season tends to run parallel to the flu season in Canada.
When those seasons collide, it’s not a lot of fun and tends to play havoc with our social lives and worse.
Parties get cancelled and extended-family get togethers are disrupted and/or cancelled because someone upstairs is coughing away and is really under the weather.
Potential hosts and hostesses with children tend to tell invited guests that they best stay away.
Respiratory illnesses, including the flu, have hospitals such as CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal working overtime. (Radio-Canada)
And this year–at least so far–things are worse than usual, especially for children.
Figures released by the Public Health Agency of Canada’s FluWatch report show that more than three times as many children have been hospitalized across the country compared to this time last year.
FluWatch figures show that–as of Dec. 15–some 8,242 cases of the flu in both adults and children have been confirmed.
About 10 per cent of the cases (864) have required hospitalization and more than 280 of those hospitalizations were children 16 or under.
A year ago at this time, just 2,400 flu cases had been confirmed and only 26 of those were children.
“We’re seeing a tremendous amount of viral illness (in children), Dr. Catherine Farrell, a pediatric intensive care specialist at CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal, told CBC News reporter Nicole Ireland.
“Our hospitals are bursting to the seams. Our emergency rooms are really overloaded. Our inpatient units are full and we have a very high occupation rate with respiratory illness in the intensive care unit … and it’s the same with the other intensive care units here in Quebec.”
Most children who get the flu can recover at home, but serious complications can require hospital care. (George Rudy/Shutterstock )
Anna Madison, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada, told told Ireland there are likely a couple of reasons.
“The current flu season began two weeks earlier compared to last year,” Madison told Ireland in an email.
“It started in mid-October rather than the beginning of November.”
According to Ireland that means it’s possible that by the end of the flu season, the total number of children hospitalized may be the same as last year but simply happened earlier.
The dominant strain of flu circulating this year — influenza A H1N1 — is also associated with “a higher burden of disease … among children than among adults,” Madison told Ireland.
Last year, the dominant strain was influenza A H3N2 — a particularly virulent type that made people of all ages very sick, but sent more adults age 65 and over to hospital than children and younger adults.
Very young children, seniors and people with medical conditions such as heart or lung disease are most at risk of contracting flu.
With files from CBC
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