Get your flu shots, health officials urge amid concerns about bad season


READ MORE

It’s flu shot time, and health officials are bracing for a potentially miserable fall and winter.


The Southern Hemisphere, especially Australia, was hit hard over the past few months with a flu strain that’s notorious for causing severe illness, especially in seniors.


And in the U.S., small clusters of that H3N2 flu already are popping up.


“We don’t know what’s going to happen but there’s a chance we could have a season similar to Australia,” Dr. Daniel Jernigan, influenza chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press.


The worrisome news came as the government urged Americans Thursday to make sure they get a flu shot before influenza starts spreading widely. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price got his own jab to publicize the importance, saying, “There’s no reason not to get protected.”


The CDC’s Jernigan cautioned there’s no good way to predict how bad the upcoming flu season will be. An H3N2 strain caused infections in Canada and the U.S. last year, too.


H3N2 called ‘bad actor’


Sometimes watching what happens in the Southern Hemisphere is a good predictor of what to expect in the Northern Hemisphere and sometimes it isn’t, said Dr. Michelle Murti, a public health physician at Public Health Ontario who conducts influenza surveillance. 


“I think it’s an important signal and something we need to be aware of,” Murti said in an interview Friday. 


“The message that I think we would want to be taking from that is a reminder that flu season is quite severe.” 


H3N2 is “the bad actor,” said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “If you needed another reason to get vaccinated, there it is. Best get that protection.”


Murti said that typically H3N2 can be more severe than other strains among those over age 65 who are at higher risk of complications. In Canada, there tend to be more outbreaks in long-term care facilities when H3N2 is the predominant strain.


World Health Organization flu advisers meeting in Australia recommended updating future vaccines for the Southern Hemisphere to strengthen H3N2 protection.



Flu does constantly evolve, forcing new vaccines to be brewed each year to match the strains specialists expect to cause most illness. In the U.S., CDC’s Jernigan said this year’s shots aren’t perfect — but that the H3N2 strain travelling around the globe hasn’t significantly changed, so the vaccine remains a pretty good match. 


 “It’s the best tool we have right now for preventing disease,” he said in an interview.


Flu season begins in Canada



The Public Health Agency of Canada’s first Fluwatch report of the 2017-18 season says flu activity remains at inter-seasonal levels across the country, with a few regions reporting sporadic or localized activity. The majority of influenza A virus subtypes were A(H3N2). 


“The 2017-18 flu vaccines available in Canada this year contain the same components as those recommended by the World Health Organization for the Northern Hemisphere,” a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada said in an email.


Across Canada, Murti said flu vaccines are now being shipped to distributors. Most provinces and territories start their annual flu vaccine campaigns toward the end of October.


Murti recommended those at high risk of influenza complications get vaccinated. This includes:


  • The elderly.

  • Children under age five.

  • Pregnant women.

  • People with underlying conditions such as asthma, respiratory or cardiovascular disease.

Those who live or work with any of the above should also be vaccinated. 


The effectiveness of influenza vaccines varies from year to year, ranging from 40 per cent to 60 per cent, Murti said 


To prevent flu, public health officials also recommend:


  • Wash your hands frequently, especially after touching your face, the face of your child or having contact with any other person who is ill.

  • Stay home when sick, and keep sick children at home, as much as possible.

  • Cover your cough by using a tissue, your sleeve or elbow, and avoid coughing into your hands.

  • For symptoms that include fever, cough, fatigue, head and body aches or a runny nose, stay home and rest in bed. 




The start of Canada’s flu season tends to peak anywhere between November and January, Murti said. 




Article source: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/sports/1.809996


Best Wordpress Plugin development company in India     Best Web development company in India

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Canadian expected to be aboard Russia's 1st manned space mission since rocket failure

READ MORE The first manned mission to the International Space Station since a Russian rocket failed to launch successfully earlier this month may take off on Dec. 3, space agency Roscosmos said on Wednesday. And the crew is expected to include Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, Agence France-Press reported. A Russian cosmonaut and U.S. astronaut were forced to abort their mission on Oct. 11 and perform an emergency landing after a launch accident that Roscomos said was caused by a faulty sensor. The accident was the first serious launch problem experienced by a manned Soyuz space mission since 1983, when a crew narrowly escaped before a launch pad explosion. Sergei Krikalyov, a senior Roscosmos official, was quoted by state news agency Tass as saying the next manned launch had been planned for mid-December, but that Russia was trying to bring the date forward so that the ISS is not briefly left without a crew. “The industry is making significant efforts to move the launch t...
Read more

Getting the dope on pot stocks is becoming easier as media groups invest in content: Don Pittis

Image
READ MORE “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening,” goes the ’70s rock anthem. Part of the catchiness of the lyric — from the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar  — was that in that era the term “buzz” had developed a second spicy meaning. It described the high that people got from smoking cannabis. In the 1970s, the magazine High Times was a brand new title keeping an eye on the illegal but growing business of marijuana pricing and sales. It ran centrefolds of glistening pot plants and of an apartment filled to the windows with what the magazine insisted was an entire ton of cannabis. Now some of Canada’s most staid media voices are looking for ways to go toe to toe with High Times and its U.S. competitors, hoping to profit from Canada’s global head start in legal recreational cannabis. But when it comes to making a killing from spreading the buzz on the cannabis biz, to q...
Read more

Toronto man denies conspiring with Marvel CEO in alleged hate mail scheme

Image
READ MORE A Toronto man accused of conspiring with the head of Marvel Entertainment in a bizarre hate mail campaign against his wealthy former employer has denied any role in the alleged scheme. David Smith, along with Marvel CEO Isaac (Ike) Perlmutter, is the target of a slander lawsuit launched earlier this year by Canadian businessman Harold Peerenboom. Now Smith — a former employee of Peerenboom’s Toronto-based executive search firm, Mandrake Management — has filed a motion to dismiss the U.S. civil suit. It’s the latest development in the years-long legal battle between Peerenboom and Perlmutter, a notoriously reclusive American billionaire and personal friend of U.S. President Donald Trump. The hate mail campaign, which ran   between 2012 to 2015, saw anonymous letters falsely accusing Peerenboom of being a child molester, murderer and anti-Semite...
Read more