News Releases & Advisories
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, November 23, 2009
H1N1 sending more kids to hospital than in previous flu seasons
Children are being hospitalized with H1N1 influenza at rates far outpacing previous flu seasons, data from a paediatric surveillance program show.
Since October, 526 cases were reported by 12 paediatric health centres across Canada, more than investigators would expect to see during an entire winter. During a recent one-week period in November, 240 children were hospitalized. That’s about half the total number hospitalized during the 2008-2009 flu season, and three to four times as many flu-related hospitalizations during any week since IMPACT began collecting data 5 years ago.
The coming weeks will tell whether the latest wave of cases has peaked. Vaccine delivery programs started rolling out at the end of October, with most provinces prioritizing people with underlying health conditions and young children. Those first vaccinees could expect to have been protected by mid-November.
“We’re certainly seeing many more children admitted to hospital this year than we have ever seen before through IMPACT surveillance,” said Dr. Wendy Vaudry, co-principal investigator of IMPACT and a professor at the University of Alberta. “The best thing parents can do to protect their children from H1N1 is to have them vaccinated, and to get vaccinated themselves, especially if they have a young baby.”
Although most children with H1N1 have mild to moderate illness without serious problems, some cases do result in hospitalization, occasionally needing intensive care.
Unlike a typical flu season, where young children are more likely to suffer serious illness, H1N1 is hitting older children hard as well. It is not yet known how many of them had underlying health conditions.
IMPACT, Immunization Monitoring Program ACTive, is a paediatric hospital-based national active surveillance network for adverse events following immunization, vaccine failures and selected infectious diseases in children that are, or are soon to be, vaccine preventable. IMPACT is administered by the Canadian Paediatric Society with funding from the Centre for Immunization and Respiration Infectious Diseases of the Public Health Agency of Canada.
For more information on H1N1 in children and youth, visit www.cps.ca or www.caringforkids.cps.ca.
Media inquiries:
Canadian Paediatric Society
613-526-9397, ext 234 or 613-850-4868 (cell)
BACKGROUNDER
Figure 1
Note: “Influenza B & mixed” refers to Influenza B, and cases where the type was mixed or unavailable.
Note: Week numbers: “1” is the week of January 1, 2009
Historical data
Total number of children hospitalized due to influenza in the 12 IMPACT centres
2003-2004 505 cases
2004-2005 391 cases
2006-2007 371 cases
2008-2009 397 cases up to May 1, 2009
May 1 – October 2, 2009: 379 cases
October 3 to present: 526 cases
* Influenza surveillance is conducted as part of IMPACT, a national surveillance network of paediatric investigators managed by the Canadian Paediatric Society and funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada's Center for Immunization and Respiratory Infectious Diseases. These are PRELIMINARY data and may not always reconcile with data presented in released or future reports. Discrepancies may exist due to ongoing, amending and updating of data. When using these data please credit the Immunization Monitoring Program Active (IMPACT).
Posted: November 2009
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