Calgary is one of the country’s hot spots for influenza: Health Canada

Calgary and the surrounding area has become one of the hot spots for the flu in Canada, according to the latest Canadian respiratory virus surveillance report, published by Health Canada.

Calgary joins B.C.’s Lower Mainland, B.C. north coast, southern Ontario, northern Quebec, the Gaspe Peninsula and northern New Brunswick as the areas of the country where Health Canada is reporting localized influenza outbreaks.

Mathieu Giroux, pharmacist at Calgary’s Cambrian Pharmacy in Northmount Village, told Global News the increase in the number of people getting the flu has also led to a recent jump in the number of people booking a flu shot.

“We’ve been doing vaccines since mid-October and we’re going on week six or seven and it’s still pretty much fully booked every day. So there’s a lot of demand,” said Giroux.

Despite the recent demand, there has been a big drop in the number of people getting vaccinated this year.

So far only about 712,000 have rolled up their sleeve, compared to over a million last year and over 1.6 million that got the shot five years ago.

“I get the flu shot every year,” said Calgarian Carolyn Levitz. “Since I started getting it about five years ago I just never get sick. I find it’s really, really effective.

Others seem less convinced.

“The kids go to daycare and stuff and as long as you eat healthy and everything should be good,” said Cal Aube.

According to the government of Alberta’s respiratory virus dashboard, there have been 251 hospitalized with the flu virus in Alberta so far this year, with 17 of them in intensive care and six deaths.

By comparison, there have been almost twice that number of Albertans hospitalized with COVID and 49 deaths.

While H1N1 was predicted to be the dominant strain of the flu this winter by makers of the flu vaccine, the H3N2 strain has become much more common in recent weeks, meaning the vaccine may not be as effective as originally hoped.

“Flu vaccines are always a prediction, a calculation based on the southern hemisphere,” said Giroux.

“That being said, there’s always cross-reaction between those strains — you still get some immunity out of them because you don’t have a perfect fit for your antibodies, but immunity is much more complex than that so there’s layers of immunity so you still get like some coverage,” said Giroux.

“The goal for any vaccine like COVID or flu is always to keep you out of the hospital — so you still get really good protection.”

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Judging by the trend over the past few years, Giroux predicts the flu outbreak is just “ramping up” and he expects it to hit its peak in late December or early January.