Swine ’flu surging across the country

OTTAWA—Hospital admissions, intensive-care unit transfers, and deaths from swine ’flu are three times higher this week than last, Canada’s chief public health officer said.
Dr. David Butler-Jones said the H1N1 virus is surging across the country, with the western provinces, the territories, and Newfoundland and Labrador hit particularly hard.

“We expect to hear of more illness and deaths in the coming weeks as we go further into the second wave,” Butler-Jones said yesterday.
He added overall ’flu activity is still below its peak during the virus’ first wave in June, but he expects to surpass that spring high point within a few weeks.
“We’re now, as of last week, we were below the peak weeks of June,” he noted. “Now we’re catching up.
“So we’re not quite there yet, but over the next few weeks we’re going to see perhaps what we saw in June,” Butler-Jones warned.
“By then, I’m hoping that we’ll have sufficient people immunized that we can slow this down.”
Anyone who thinks the virus is on the wane should think again, he added.
“Anybody that thinks that we’ve seen anything but the beginning of this, I think it would be lovely, but it’s a bit of wishful thinking,” Butler-Jones remarked.
“This will continue to increase.”
Millions of Canadians have received the swine ’flu shot since Health minister Leona Aglukkaq approved the vaccine late last month.
But long lineups clogged overcrowded clinics already coping with a temporary vaccine shortage, which sparked confusion and frustration among many Canadians.
Some parts of Ontario—such as Sudbury, Kingston, and Niagara—have seen more ’flu activity and are “quite busy,” noted Dr. Arlene King, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.
But 41 ’flu assessment clinics have been set up to relieve the congestion in Ontario emergency rooms.
The Sudbury Regional Hospital is swamped with swine ’flu cases and is warning people with ’flu-like symptoms to stay away.
In an update to its staff, the hospital reported a 30 percent surge in visits to the emergency room.
The hospital said some surgical cases have been cancelled, and it will proceed only with critical surgical case until demand is alleviated.
Other hospitals from Vancouver to Montreal have done the same.
In B.C., the province’s chief health officer said some hospitals are losing staff to the H1N1 virus as emergency rooms buckle under a crush of swine ’flu cases.
“Some hospitals are seeing so much demand on the emergency rooms that they’ve actually temporarily stopped operating some of their ambulatory care . . . and they’ll send doctors to the ERs to deal with the ’flu patients,” Dr. Perry Kendall said.
“And I think that we may well encounter a situation, sooner or later, where because of the volume of patients in hospitals, hospitals will either curtail, or stop or temporarily stop, elective admissions for elective surgeries so they can make space in their beds, or so that they can have the staff read up so they can deal with influenza patients.”