H1N1 flu pandemic unofficially over for now

While the World Health Organization says H1N1 has not peaked internationally, the pandemic is considered unofficially over in Canada.

"Clearly, in Canada, H1N1 is gone," Dr. Michael Gardam, director of infectious disease prevention and control with the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, said Tuesday.

"It doesn't mean it's gone forever, but it's gone right now. There is really no flu around. That's everywhere across the country," Gardam said. Toronto Public Health closed the last of its mass vaccination clinics in January, but some physicians continue to offer the shot in their offices, said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, the city's associate medical officer of health.

"Over the last while we have had zero to two to three cases reported a week," she said.

The WHO's emergency committee, composed of 15 experts, met Tuesday and said it's premature to downgrade the global flu outbreak.

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan will make the official announcement Wednesday, and governments and the public will be watching the wording very carefully.

Dr. Nancy Cox of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a member of the WHO emergency committee, said in an interview with Reuters that "it's very, very difficult to get the wording exactly right."

According to the WHO's latest weekly update, H1N1 transmission persists in limited areas of eastern and southern Europe, South Asia, and in East Asia.

Officially, Canada is still in pandemic mode and won't move away from level 6 on the alert scale until the United Nations agency does.

According to statistics from the Public Health Agency of Canada, visits to doctors by patients with flu-like symptoms spiked in late October.

Of every 1,000 doctor visits, about 113 were from patients with influenza symptoms.

"It peaked by Halloween, and by the end of December it was largely gone. Over the last two months it has been essentially nonexistent," Gardam said.

A feared "third wave" won't happen here since so many people now have antibodies against the virus, Gardam said.

Estimates show that 20 to 30 per cent of Ontarians got the bug, he noted. And according to the health ministry, 38 per cent of the population has been vaccinated.

Nevertheless, a similar strain is expected to come back as seasonal flu next fall. But much of the population will have the antibodies to fight it and a vaccine will be ready in time for flu season.

The H1N1 virus itself was not as lethal as officials first feared. Worldwide, it has been responsible for almost 16,000 deaths. In Canada, it resulted in 78 deaths and 1,488 hospitalizations.