2009 flu pandemic in Canada | |
---|---|
Disease | Swine flu |
Virus strain | H1N1 |
First outbreak | Thought to be Veracruz, Mexico |
Arrival date | 20 April 2009 |
Suspected cases‡ | 1.5 million (by 20 November 2016) |
Deaths | 428 [1] |
‡Suspected cases have not been confirmed by laboratory tests as being due to this strain, although some other strains may have been ruled out. |
The 2009 swine flu pandemic in Canada was part of an epidemic in 2009 of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 causing what has been commonly called swine flu. In Canada, roughly 10% of the populace (or 3.5 million) has been infected with the virus, [2] [3] with 428 confirmed deaths (as of 20 February 2017); [1] non-fatal individual cases are for the most part no longer being recorded. About 40% of Canadians have been immunized against H1N1 since a national vaccination campaign began in October 2009, [4] with Canada among the countries in the world leading in the percentage of the population that has been vaccinated. [2] [5] The widespread effect of H1N1 in Canada raised concerns during the months leading to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, which took place in Vancouver in February 2010. [6]
As of 9 April 2010, there were 1,278 confirmed hospitalized cases in Alberta. [7]
On 2 May 2009, Canadian Food Inspection Agency executive vice-president Brian Evans announced that an infected Alberta farm worker recently returned from Mexico had apparently passed the virus to a swine herd in his care. Although the herd had been quarantined, Evans stressed that the infection represented no threat to food safety and judged the possibility of infected pigs passing the virus back to humans "remote". Evans said the infection of the herd was the first known case of the H1N1 virus being transmitted from humans to pigs. [8] Transmission from the same herd of pigs back to humans was revealed on 20 July, though it occurred on 7 May when the humans, health inspectors, were taking samples from the infected herd with improper self-protective measures. [9]
On 8 May, health officials in Alberta confirmed that swine flu contributed to the death of a woman in Northern Alberta on 28 April, Canada's first death associated with the illness. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
As of 14 August 2009, there were 1,648 confirmed cases of swine flu in Alberta. Health and Wellness Alberta stopped reporting non-hospitalized cases on 21 August. [7]
The B.C. government has reported 1,060 severe flu cases as of 2 February 2010. 49 of 56 fatalities were people with underlying medical conditions. [16] The province is no longer reporting non-severe cases (Total cases reached 676 by 10 August). [17]
The initial cases in British Columbia involved two young men aged 25–35 from the B.C. Lower Mainland who had recently come back from Mexico, according to Danuta Skowronski, head of flu and respiratory illnesses at the BC Centre for Disease Control, run by the provincial government. The cases were discovered by normal flu testing conducted by the disease control centre after the men had visited a doctor about flu-like symptoms. She noted the disease seemed "widespread" in Mexico and should not be mistaken by tourists to be linked only with urban Mexico City. [18] The first fatality in British Columbia caused by the H1N1 virus occurred on 14 July, and was a young child who died within 24 hours of being rushed to the hospital. [19] There were concerns of H1N1 during the months leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics that occurred in Vancouver in February 2010, as a result volunteers were required to be vaccinated. [6] On 28 January, Perry Kendall, the provincial health officer, stated that the chances of a third wave of H1N1 were "diminishing". However, he maintained that vaccinations continued to be recommended for all and are vital for reducing the risk of another wave of H1N1. [20]
As of 5 October 2009, there were 892 confirmed cases in the province, with 7 deaths associated with the H1N1 virus. [21] As of 1 February 2010, there had been 1,774 new confirmed cases, with 4 deaths since the start of the "second wave" 6 October. [21]
On 3 May, the first case in Manitoba was confirmed in the Brandon area. [22] The second case in Manitoba was announced on 12 May. The second case, a Winnipeg woman in her 50s was admitted to hospital, although the province noted she also has an unidentified underlying medical condition.[ citation needed ]
As of 4 January 2010, there were 267 hospitalized cases in the province. [23]
On 13 June, Newfoundland and Labrador reported their first case of swine flu, becoming the final province to do so. The case involves a sample collected from a young man who was treated Thursday 11 June at the hospital in Grand Falls-Windsor. [24]
The first recorded death of a person with swine flu was recorded on 1 November 2009, when a 36-year-old woman died from the virus. [25]
The first case in New Brunswick was confirmed to be present in Greater Moncton on 1 May 2009. [26]
By 28 August, there had been 147 confirmed cases in New Brunswick. The first deaths occurred 13 November. [27]
On 1 June, the Northwest Territories confirmed their first case of swine flu. [28] The first death occurred in November. [1]
From the beginning of the 2009–10 flu season in September until 2 December, there were 739 confirmed cases, including 255 hospitalizations. [29]
First cases: Nova Scotia's chief medical officer, Robert Strang, said on 26 April that the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg confirmed late the previous day that four people in the province between the ages of 12 and 18 were recovering from "relatively mild" cases of the disease. The four people were students attending King's-Edgehill School preparatory school in Windsor, Nova Scotia. One of the infected students had been on a recent school trip to the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico. [30] [31]
On 16 July 2009, Nunavut reported its first swine flu death. [32] As of 5 August, there were 496 confirmed cases of the swine flu. [33]
There were 8,633 confirmed cases in Ontario, with 1,725 hospitalizations as of 10 December. [34]
On 27 April 2009, four cases were suspected to be swine flu in Ontario. This number grew to ten cases in five days. [35] On 25 May, Ontario Health Minister David Caplan confirmed that a Toronto man in his 40s had died of the virus. [36] [37]
The Toronto region acted as a secondary epicentre during the 2003 SARS epidemic, and took extra precautions against the H1N1 virus in the early stages of the pandemic. [38]
Ontario is also home to what is believed to be the youngest Canadian death from swine flu. A two-month-old baby was admitted to the London Health Sciences Centre on 2 November 2009; the boy died in the early morning two days later. [39] This death, is one of three recently reported in London, Ontario, and has brought the number of confirmed deaths from H1N1 since April in Ontario to 95 as of 26 November 2009. [1]
As of 8 December 2009, there were 50 hospitalizations in the province, and no deaths. [40]
Prince Edward Island confirmed its first two cases in Charlottetown on 4 May 2009. [41]
There had been 2,422 hospitalized cases as of 4 December 2009. [42]
While an early case Quebec turned out not to be swine flu, [43] on 30 April 2009, the first case in the province was confirmed in the Greater Montreal Area.
The first case of death was announced on 8 June, making the total of 4 deaths for Canada. The person was a more than 65-year-old woman suffering from respiratory diseases before being hospitalized on 2 June. According to medical expertise, she had never traveled to Mexico and had no contact with those who did. [44]
Confirmed cases totalled 10,714 between 30 August and 4 December 2009. [42]
The first cases were confirmed on 7 May in the Saskatoon and Regina areas. [45]
The province stopped counting individual cases as of 23 July 2009. At that point there were 888 confirmed cases. [46]
On 12 May 2009, Yukon reported its first case of swine flu. [1] The first death was a school-aged girl who died on 1 November. [47]
Province/Territory | Confirmed Deaths by 20 February [1] | Increase Reported 14 – 20 February [1] |
---|---|---|
British Columbia | 57 | 1 |
Alberta | 71 | 0 |
Saskatchewan | 15 | 0 |
Manitoba | 11 | 0 |
Ontario | 128 | 0 |
Quebec | 108 | 0 |
New Brunswick | 8 | 0 |
Nova Scotia | 7 | 0 |
Prince Edward Island | 0 | 0 |
Newfoundland and Labrador | 18 | 0 |
Yukon | 3 | 0 |
Northwest Territories | 1 | 0 |
Nunavut | 1 | 0 |
Total | 428 | 1 |
Evolution of the Novel Human Swine Influenza A/H1N1(2009) Mexican Flu in Canada [48] |
On 2 May, the first incidence in Canada of the flu in pigs was discovered on a farm in Alberta. [49] It is suspected that an infected farmhand who recently returned from Mexico infected the animals. [50]
In Canada in early June, the Alberta pig farmer whose herd was infected with the new swine flu virus culled his entire herd. In May he had already culled 500 animals from his herd. The farm owner said the animals could not be marketed because they are under quarantine and he was facing a problem with overcrowding. [51]
Michael Gardam, director of infectious disease prevention and control at the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, said in an interview with the CBC that an outbreak of swine flu in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, would not be as serious as the 2003 SARS epidemic. [52] In preparing for and dealing with an influenza pandemic, the Public Health Agency of Canada follows the WHO's categories, but has expanded them somewhat. [53] Despite initial reports of two swine influenza cases in Montreal's Lakeshore General Hospital, Johanne Simard of the Montreal Regional Health Board confirmed negative results for all quarantined patients at the hospital and that no quarantines were currently in effect at the hospital. [54] The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg confirmed cases of human swine influenza virus in clinical specimens sent from Mexico [55] and the Canadian government issued a travel advisory for Mexico, warning Canadians who have returned from the country of the severe respiratory illness. [56]
On 26 April, the Government of Nova Scotia announced on a live webcast that four students in Windsor, Nova Scotia, have confirmed cases of swine flu. [57] Later that day, the Federal Government confirmed the existence of a total of six cases in Canada; four in Nova Scotia and two in British Columbia. Federal Health minister Leona Aglukkaq said the Canadian federal government would take whatever measures were necessary to keep the public safe, and that as Canada continued to ramp out its surveillance efforts there would likely be more reported cases. She also said she had been in contact with her provincial and territorial counterparts and had ordered the Public Health Agency of Canada to alert border authorities, quarantine officers and other officials. [58] However, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer, David Butler-Jones, stated that the six affected Canadians suffered from only mild symptoms and have already started to recover. However, Butler-Jones warned against complacency, stating that the fact that only mild cases have been reported so far "doesn't mean we won't see either some more severe illness or potentially deaths." [59] In both provinces, the cases either involved people who had recently returned from Mexico or those in close contact with such people. [60]
In a step towards understanding the outbreak, and developing a vaccine, Canadian scientists completed the first full genetic sequencing of the H1N1 swine flu virus on 6 May. [61]
The high percentage of mild to severe cases amongst First Nations Peoples in Manitoba and Northern Ontario, when compared to the general population, have raised questions about the vulnerability of these communities to H1N1 across Canada. [62] [63] Concerns have also risen about whether the Canadian government's pandemic preparation plan is able to properly address the specific needs of these communities. [64]
Swine influenza is an infection caused by any of several types of swine influenza viruses. Swine influenza virus (SIV) or swine-origin influenza virus (S-OIV) refers to any strain of the influenza family of viruses that is endemic in pigs. As of 2009, identified SIV strains include influenza C and the subtypes of influenza A known as H1N1, H1N2, H2N1, H3N1, H3N2, and H2N3.
In virology, influenza A virus subtype H1N1 (A/H1N1) is a subtype of influenza A virus. Major outbreaks of H1N1 strains in humans include the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the 1977 Russian flu pandemic and the 2009 swine flu pandemic. It is an orthomyxovirus that contains the glycoproteins hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N), antigens whose subtypes are used to classify the strains of the virus as H1N1, H1N2 etc. Hemagglutinin causes red blood cells to clump together and binds the virus to the infected cell. Neuraminidase is a type of glycoside hydrolase enzyme which helps to move the virus particles through the infected cell and assist in budding from the host cells.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1/swine flu/influenza virus and declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) from June 2009 to August 2010, was the third recent flu pandemic involving the H1N1 virus. The first identified human case was in La Gloria, Mexico, a rural town in Veracruz. The virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 that resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses which further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus, leading to the term "swine flu".
The 2009 flu pandemic in the United States was caused by a novel strain of the Influenza A/H1N1 virus, commonly referred to as "swine flu", that was first detected on 15 April 2009. While the 2009 H1N1 virus strain was commonly referred to as "swine flu", there is no evidence that it is endemic to pigs or of transmission from pigs to people; instead, the virus spreads from person to person. On April 25, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency, followed concurringly by the Obama administration on April 26.
This article covers the chronology of the 2009 novel influenza A (H1N1) pandemic. Flag icons denote the first announcements of confirmed cases by the respective nation-states, their first deaths, and relevant sessions and announcements of the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Union , and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
In March and April 2009, an outbreak of a new strain of influenza commonly referred to as "swine flu" infected many people in Mexico and other parts of the world, causing illness ranging from mild to severe. Initial reports suggested that the outbreak had started in February due to farming practices at a pig farm half-owned by Smithfield Foods. Smithfield Foods stated that it had found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in the company's swine herd, or among its employees at its joint ventures in Mexico, that it routinely administers influenza virus vaccination to their swine herds and that it conducts monthly testing for the presence of swine influenza. The new strain was identified as a combination of several different strains of Influenzavirus A, subtype H1N1, including separate strains of this subtype circulating in humans and in pigs.
Australia had 37,537 confirmed cases of H1N1 Influenza 2009 and 191 deaths reported by Department of Health but only 77 deaths reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The actual numbers are much larger, as only serious cases warranted being tested and treated at the time. Suspected cases have not been reported by the Department of Health and Ageing since 18 May 2009 because they were changing too quickly to report. Sources say that as many as 1600 Australians may have actually died as a result of this virus. On 23rd of May 2009 the federal government classified the outbreak as CONTAIN phase except in Victoria where it was escalated to the SUSTAIN phase on 3rd of June 2009. This gave government authorities permission to close schools in order to slow the spread of the disease. On 17 June 2009 the Department of Health and Ageing introduced a new phase called PROTECT. This modified the response to focus on people with high risk of complications from the disease. Testing at airports was discontinued. The national stockpile of antiviral drugs were no longer made available to people with the flu unless there were more than mild symptoms or a high risk of dying.
This article deals with the status and efforts regarding the 2009 swine flu pandemic by country and continent/region.
The pandemic H1N1/09 virus is a swine origin influenza A virus subtype H1N1 strain that was responsible for the 2009 swine flu pandemic. This strain is often called swine flu by the public media due to the prevailing belief that it originated in pigs. The virus is believed to have originated around September 2008 in central Mexico.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic was confirmed to have spread to the Philippines on May 21, 2009. In the following days, several local cases were reported to be caused by contact with two infected Taiwanese women who attended a wedding ceremony in Zambales.
The 2009 flu pandemic in South America was part of a global epidemic in 2009 of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, causing what has been commonly called swine flu. As of 9 June 2009, the virus had affected at least 2,000 people in South America, with at least 4 confirmed deaths. On 3 May 2009, the first case of the flu in South America was confirmed in a Colombian man who recently travelled from Mexico – since then, it has spread throughout the continent. By far, the most affected country has been Chile, with more than 12,000 confirmed cases, 104 deaths, and the highest per capita incidence in the world.
The 2009 flu pandemic in Asia, part of an epidemic in 2009 of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 causing what has been commonly called swine flu, afflicted at least 394,133 people in Asia with 2,137 confirmed deaths: there were 1,035 deaths confirmed in India, 737 deaths in China, 415 deaths in Turkey, 192 deaths in Thailand, and 170 deaths in South Korea. Among the Asian countries, South Korea had the most confirmed cases, followed by China, Hong Kong, and Thailand.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic in North America, part of a pandemic in 2009 of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 causing what has been commonly called swine flu, began in the United States or Mexico.
The 2009 flu pandemic in Oceania, part of an epidemic in 2009 of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 causing what has been commonly called swine flu, has afflicted at over 22,000 people in Oceania, with 56 confirmed deaths. Almost all of the cases in Oceania have been in Australia, where the majority of cases have resulted from internal community spread of the virus. In addition, the government of New Zealand, where most of the remainder of cases in Oceania have occurred, is on high alert for any people travelling into the country with flu-like symptoms.
The 2009 flu pandemic in Europe was part of a pandemic involving a new strain of influenza, subtype H1N1. H1N1 is commonly called swine flu. The pandemic infected at least 125,550 people in Europe. There were 458 confirmed deaths in Turkey, 438 confirmed deaths in Russia, and 457 confirmed deaths in the United Kingdom.
The 2009 flu pandemic hit Africa two months later than other continents with the first case reported in Egypt on June 2, 2009. As of December 1, 30 countries in Africa had reported cases and 7 countries in Africa had reported a total of 108 deaths. It was the least affected continent.
The United States experienced the beginnings of a pandemic of a novel strain of the influenza A/H1N1 virus, commonly referred to as "swine flu", in the spring of 2009. The earliest reported cases in the US began appearing in late March 2009 in California, then spreading to infect people in Texas, New York, and other states by mid-April. Early cases were associated with recent travel to Mexico; many were students who had traveled to Mexico for Spring Break. This spread continued across the country's population and by the end of May there were approximately 0 confirmed cases throughout all 50 states.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic in New Zealand was caused by a novel strain of the A/H1N1 influenza virus. A total of 3,175 cases and 69 deaths were recorded, although a seroprevalence study estimated that around 800,000 individuals may have been infected during the initial wave of the pandemic.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic reached various parts of India. Soon after the outbreak of H1N1 virus in the United States and Mexico in March, the Government of India started screening people coming from the affected countries at airports for swine flu symptoms. The first case of the flu in India was found on the Hyderabad airport on 13 May, when a man traveling from US to India was found H1N1 positive. Subsequently, more confirmed cases were reported and as the rate of transmission of the flu increased in the beginning of August, with the first death due to swine flu in India in Pune, panic began to spread. As of 24 May 2010, 10193 cases of swine flu have been confirmed with 1035 deaths.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic was a global outbreak of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, first identified in April 2009, termed Pandemic H1N1/09 virus by the World Health Organization (WHO) and colloquially called swine flu. The outbreak was first observed in Mexico, and quickly spread globally. On the 11th of June 2009, the WHO declared the outbreak to be a pandemic. The overwhelming majority of patients experience mild symptoms, but some persons are at higher risk of suffering more serious effects; such as those with asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, or those who are pregnant or have a weakened immune system. In the rare severe cases, around 3–5 days after symptoms manifest, the sufferer's condition declines quickly, often to the point respiratory failure. Although Ukraine was not (very) affected at first there was on outbreak of the virus in Western Ukraine in early November 2009 that led to the closing of public buildings and cancellation of meetings for three weeks.