Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Infectious disease experts are already hard at work preparing for the 2021 flu season, vaccines are in development and experts are keeping an eye on trends in the Southern Hemisphere as they enter their winter months.
The World Health Organization (WHO) made recommendations for the annual influenza vaccine in February 2021, based on the data collected from the previous year. The WHO uses the previous flu season’s data to identify trends in which flu strains took hold, and to make recommendations for which strains would be best suited in the annual flu vaccine. The WHO has conducted global influenza surveillance since 1952.
“Although the flu season cases were very low last season, the WHO has a global surveillance program, they're still monitoring what strains they predict will be dominant in the next flu season,” Yan Zhou, senior scientist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Flu seasons in 2020 were mild across the globe. In Canada a start to the season couldn’t even be declared due to so few cases, Australia reported just 36 deaths and the U.S. reported 600 which was down from 22,000 the year before. Despite the lack of cases to predict from, the WHO and experts know that there are two main influenza types that spread during the annual cold weather months. Zhou says there is always influenza A, such as H1N1, and influenza B.
“The flu vaccine is comprised of at least three strains: So, H1N1, H3N2 and then a B strain.”
The WHO recommends a quadrivalent vaccine, a vaccine containing four strains, for the Northern Hemisphere’s 2021 flu season. Two strains will be influenza A strains and two will be influenza B strains.
“Most cases [last] season, influenza B was dominant,” said Zhou.
The WHO recommends that the vaccine contain H1N1 and H3N2 for influenza A strains and Yamagata lineage and Victoria lineage for the B influenza strains. And while the WHO may be working off of less data than usual, Zhou isn’t too concerned about the upcoming flu season.
“Not too worried about, to predict, the flu season. There will always be A and B and we already know from the last year’s cases, there are more influenza B infections,” she said.
Much like with the COVID-19 vaccine, some protection is better than no protection, so even if the WHO’s recommended strains aren’t spot-on, they should still provide a barrier against severe illness.
“The provincial vaccine programs over the course of the last decade or so has significantly reduced hospitalizations and deaths, even in years where the flu shot ‘did not match very well,’” Craig Jenne, infectious disease researcher and Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Wednesday.
So, while predicting this year’s flu season trends based on a smaller dataset from 2020 may be difficult, it doesn’t necessarily spell out a disastrous flu season to come, he added. In previous years, the flu has mutated differently than expected resulting in an imperfect vaccine.
“Even in those situations where we have a bad guess or the virus dodged it and mutated further, although the flu shot doesn't necessarily stop you from getting infected as well, it still reduces hospitalizations, by some estimates of up to tenfold,” said Jenne.
“It's still protective so a mismatched flu shot might not stop you from getting the sore throat and other effects, but it prevents people from getting the life-threatening serious influenza illness.”
Like Zhou, he’s not too worried about the upcoming flu season.
“It's not overly worrisome. I'll get my flu shot again, and then basically have no elevated concerns over any other flu season,” he said.
If last year’s limited flu season can teach us anything, it’s that the COVID-19 measures in place work to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.
“This idea of washing our hands and staying away from other people was apparently quite effective worldwide,” he said. “I think the larger contribution was also somewhat limited travel so as with pretty much any virus it doesn’t move on it’s own.”
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
People living near a wildfire burning about 15 kilometres southwest of Peace River are being told to evacuate their homes.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
Police are investigating after a transport truck collided with a train in Sarnia.
As some family doctors are retiring and others are moving away from family medicine, there are fewer medical students to take their place.
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
United States authorities who have been searching for a pair of missing kayakers from British Columbia since the weekend have recovered two bodies in the nearby San Juan Islands of Washington state.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.