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| Current Weekly Report | Weekly Reports 2009-2010 Season |
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About FluWatch
FluWatch is Canada's national surveillance system that monitors the spread of flu and flu-like illnesses on an on-going basis. FluWatch reports, posted every Friday, contain specific information for health professionals on flu viruses circulating in Canada.
The FluWatch program consists of a network of labs, hospitals, doctor's offices and provincial and territorial ministries of health. Program objectives include to:
- Detect flu outbreaks across the country as early as possible
- Provide timely up-to-date information on flu activity in Canada and abroad to health professionals [and interested Canadians]
- Monitor circulating strains of the flu virus (like H1N1) and assess their sensitivity to antiviral medications, [such as Tamiflu and Relenza]. Antivirals, when used by doctors to treat flu, can help reduce the severity of the illness and the recovery time for a patient
- Provide information that the World Health Organization can use to make its recommendations on the best vaccine to use for seasonal flu shots.
The Summary Box below covers the main findings from the current week's FluWatch posting and contains links to specific information, graphs and charts contained in the publication.
Summary of FluWatch Findings for the
Week ending January 30, 2010
- During week 4, all influenza indicators remained low for this time of the year.
- Although, there was an increase in the number of influenza-like-illness outbreaks reported this week (11 in schools and one in a residential institution), only 0.6% (13 out of 2318) of the specimens tested were positive for influenza (7 pandemic H1N1 2009, 6 influenza A not-subtyped and one B). It is important to note that most ILI school outbreaks are based on symptoms and are not laboratory-confirmed. Therefore, school outbreaks could be due to influenza or any other respiratory pathogen such as the respiratory syncytial virus for whose detection continued to increase in a number of provinces this week.
- Thirty-one hospitalized cases, no ICU admissions and 1 death were reported during week 4. The death was from ON. Only six hospitalized cases reported since the beginning of the pandemic had symptom onset dates in 2010.
- On January 27, 2010, the Public Health Agency of Canada announced that the second wave of pandemic H1N1 2009 has tapered off.
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