Swine flu putting more kids in hospital
Health officials warn peak of second wave hasn't hit yet
Sharon Kirkey, Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, November 26, 2009
Human swine flu is hospitalizing three to four times as many children than regular seasonal influenza, new data from a nationwide surveillance system shows.
Since October, 526 H1N1-related hospitalizations were reported by 12 pediatric teaching hospitals across Canada that together represent almost 90 per cent of all tertiary care pediatric beds in the country.
During the week of Nov. 7 alone, 264 children were hospitalized --about half the total number of Canadian children hospitalized during last year's entire flu season, and three to four times as many flu-related admissions during any week since the network began collecting data five years ago.
At the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, as of Wednesday, 108 children had been admitted with laboratory-confirmed H1N1 since the beginning of the second wave of H1N1 in early October.
That compares to 40 children admitted during the entire 2007-08 flu season, and 37 children admitted during the 2006-07 flu season.
In the first wave of pandemic H1N1 this spring, 32 children were admitted to CHEO with confirmed H1N1.
"Children across Canada are being hospitalized in very large numbers for influenza this year, much larger than anything we've ever seen before," said Dr. Wendy Vaudry, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Alberta and coprincipal investigator of IMPACT, an immunization monitoring program administered by the Canadian Paediatric Society and funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
"It is causing significant illness in children all across Canada."
Vaudry, a mother of four, said vaccination is the best way to protect children against H1N1. "If I were a parent hearing this, I'd walk out this afternoon and go to your closest clinic and get your baby immunized," she said.
It is not yet known how many children admitted to hospital during the second wave have required intensive care. Normally, about 15 per cent of children admitted with flu end up in intensive care. It is also not yet known how many of them had underlying health conditions.
Usually, most flu admissions for children are for youngsters under age two. But older children are being hospitalized with H1N1.
"We're seeing more children in the two-to-five, and five-to-nine age groups than we usually do in a normal flu season," Vaudry says.
Federal officials said while the number of H1N1 cases is "levelling off" in some parts of the country, the peak of the second wave has not yet been reached. And they warned Canadians about becoming complacent.
Fewer positive flu tests and fewer outbreaks in schools were reported by the provinces and territories in the past week, two key indicators used to monitor the pandemic.
But the numbers remain well above normal for this time of year. In the last few weeks, for example, the rate of people seeking medical attention for flu-like symptoms was four to seven times higher than usual.
"In reaching the plateau of the second wave in some communities, it does not mean the pandemic is over," Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada's chief public health officer, said.
"There is still the other side of the peak and there remain millions of infections to be prevented."
B.C. entered its second wave of the pandemic sooner than other provinces and, while it is still reporting a high number of hospitalizations, it was lower in the past week than in the previous week.
About 15 million doses of H1N1 vaccine will have been shipped to the provinces by the end of this week, and many jurisdictions are now immunizing the general population, and not just high-priority groups.
Butler-Jones warned about the possibility of a third wave of infections.
As of Tuesday, 279 deaths linked to the H1N1 virus had been reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
![[]](http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/images/footerdots2.gif){kind=small}
