'It could be catastrophic': Woman says natural supplement contained hidden painkiller drug
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
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.”
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
Police have released video footage of a dramatic takedown of a group of teens wanted in connection with an attempted carjacking in Markham earlier this month.
Canada called for 'all parties' to de-escalate rising tensions in the Mideast following an apparent Israeli drone attack against Iran overnight.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
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 four 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.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.