With fewer Canadians choosing to get flu shots over the past two years due to the lull in flu cases and the end of COVID-19-related health restrictions this spring, Dr. Matthew Oughton says more people are now at increased risk of getting the flu. The infectious disease specialist at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital said the lifting of measures such as mask mandates may also explain why Canada is experiencing such an unusual trend in flu cases this year. Cases started appearing in April and continued into June. That’s much earlier than the usual November to March trend the country sees, but not surprising, Oughton said. “I think we’ve actually done an unintended experiment to prove how much we can eliminate the flu with non-drug measures: physical distancing, wearing masks, hand hygiene,” Oughton said. “They seem to be working extremely well.” Dr. Matthew Oughton says there are more people now at increased risk of getting the flu because fewer Canadians chose to get flu shots over the past two years. (Submitted by Matthew Oughton) By the end of April, the data from the Public Health Agency of Canada showed a 9.6 percent positivity rate for influenza A infections across Canada, driven in large part by an increase in cases in Quebec. The infection rate was above what would normally be expected during the season, the agency said. The 1,637 cases of influenza A reported are more than double those reported during the same period in 2019. It was the leading strain of flu virus both years. On Wednesday, Quebec’s director of public health announced that the province will begin its flu vaccine campaign a full month earlier than usual. By October, Quebecers will be able to get both Anti-influenza and COVID-19 booster at the same time. Dr. Luc Boileau said this is in hopes of preventing a resurgence of flu and COVID-19 outbreaks that could threaten to overwhelm hospitals. “We’re taking all the care it takes to be well prepared for this,” Boileau said. “We expect it to be something that will ease hospital capacity.” He pointed to the previous occurrence of influenza outbreaks in the southern hemisphere. Earlier this year, Australia suffered its worst flu season in years and data from Australia’s Department of Health and Aged Care showed infections were higher than the five-year average – with infections rising and then falling earlier than the usual. It also coincided with the country’s first major wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, a trend some public health experts they call it “didemic”. The lull in flu cases due to the pandemic means scientists have less health data to interpret, Oughton said, making it harder for them to predict which flu strains are most likely to dominate this fall. “The seasonal flu vaccine has to be based on a best guess. In an environment where there are very few flu strains circulating, that guess from last year’s seasonal flu vaccine didn’t work out very well,” he said. “Let’s cross our fingers and hope we don’t see a big flu wave,” Oughton added. “But I think the prudent approach is to assume it will happen and learn what we can from the data we have from other parts of the world.” Nimâ Machouf, an epidemiologist and infectious disease consultant at Le Gardeur Hospital in Terrebonne, Que., says she worries that vaccinations alone won’t be enough to prevent future waves of respiratory viruses. Epidemiologist Dr. Nimâ Machouf speaking to CBC New Brunswick in 2020. (Laurent Boursier/Radio-Canada) “There are no other prevention measures, so we will have flu and we will have COVID-19 at the same time,” said Machouf, who holds a doctorate and lectures at the Université de Montréal. He said mask mandates should be reinstated, but with the election underway, he doubts any candidate will bother to push the unpopular measure. “Unfortunately, political reasons now dominate [our] health measures,” Matsouf said. At the very least, the province could step up and fix ventilation problems in large public indoor spaces like schools, he said. Or let people take home more than one rapid COVID-19 test kit per month. “It will have a huge impact on reducing the spread of these viruses. But it costs money.”
