WHO to determine if H1N1 pandemic has peaked
February 23, 2010
Theresa Boyle
HEALTH REPORTER
As the World Health Organization considers whether H1N1 infections have 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 ad 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,” he added.
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.
WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan is expected to announce Wednesday whether the pandemic has peaked internationally, Reuters reports.
The WHO’s emergency committee, composed of 15 influenza experts, met Tuesday to assess the situation and advise Chan on whether the world has entered a “post-peak” period.
That doesn’t mean the pandemic would be declared over, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told Reuters. Rather, it would tell countries to start making plans to transition out of pandemic mode while at the same time still remaining vigilant about the bug.
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 had first feared. Worldwide, it has been responsible for almost 16,000 deaths. In Canada, it resulted in 78 deaths and 1,488 hospitalizations.
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