[CanadaSue]

The reports from Europe are in & the situation remains good. In some nations, flu has decreased & in most others belonging to the centralized reporting network, reports remain at or below baseline for this time of year. It's shaping up to be a more 'typical' season in terms of timing. More good news - no new strains popping up there, (I MUST find a Russian source) & no larger scale outbreaks or institutional outbreaks reported.

The big question remaining is what type or subtype will prevail this season. While there's a bit more H3N2 being seen - mainly A/Wellington, H1N1 is also very much in the pircture this year.

RSV is increasing - I'll be watching that one for any changes. It GENERALLY affectds kids.

The report in detail, is here:

http://dev.eiss.org/cgi-files/bulletin_v2.cgi?display=1&code=128&bulletin=128

North American reports won't be until later ths afternoon but tabular data from Canada suggests that levels of flu, paraflu & RSV are holding stable overall & at or below baselines. Interestingly, the one area wth the most positive flu samples in right here in Kingston with 7 reports. I'll have to wait for the text report to get the types/subtypes.

[Pepper]

Thanks Sue. With you on board, I think we have a heads up compared to the sheelpe! Great job.

Pepper

[CanadaSue]

Nothing in that report about the suspected H5N1 case admitted to hospital in France.

I really think someone is pushing the sensational here. Vietnam gets tons or ordinary hman strain flu & IF this turns out to be a flu case, it's most likely simply that.

About to cruise French news sites to see if they have anything more up to date.

[CanadaSue]

Canada's text data is up & not a whole lot is going on. Sporadic & localized flu activity is being reported across most provinces & territories. So far it's almost all A/Fujian with a few B/Shanghai positives thrown in for variety. The other main causes of respiratory illness remain at or bleow baseline. This week adenovirus, while remaining below baseline shot up remarkably so maybe we have a new plague of "sniffilis" hitting the schools. Certainly seems so here. It seems we're also going to track kids hospitalized for flu & complications - finally. They ran that as a pilot program last year & are going with full implmentation this year. No reports of such yet.

A correction - I'd said yesterday we had a population base of 150k - it's actually closer to 175k in the area our health unit is responsible for. They managed just over 50% flu vax coverage last year & will be a bit above that this year but not by much. The province is aiming over the next year or 2, to attain a 70% coverage rate. As long as the shots remain free & the clinics pentiful, that's attainable. The 4 used by us this year, (we all went at different days/times/locations), were very smoothly run.

It's more typical here to see flu really ramping up within a week of kids returning to school after Christmas holidays, In this province then, I'm expecting numbers to shoot up on the January 14th report.

Pepper was right, numbers are going up slowly in the States with flu popping up here, there & everywhere. Thankfully, case counts remain below baseline as do complications. So far so good.

Our weekly report also noted that the last human case of H5N1 was reported from Vietnam on October 25th, so it's unlikely the returning traveller had that. Vietnam has been pretty upfornt about H5N1 cases - hard not to be with the WHO currently camped out there...