18 more Canadians die from Swine Flu, including Alberta infant
Mike Gorbous died from Swine Flu in Calgary.
OTTAWA – Swine Flu took ten more lives in Ontario and eight more in other provinces to boost Canada’s fatalities total from the pandemic virus to 390.
In Alberta, an infant with no previous medical history was among two reported dead. Also, Mike Gorbous, a 16-year-old grade-11 Calgary student died on Tuesday after being in a coma since Nov. 2. But Gorbous’s death is not among the two reported in Alberta.
The additional ten deaths in Ontario – along with one more that has not been lab confirmed – comes as a surprise because the province has reported a decline in all other indicators including hospital admissions and visits to doctors for influenza like illness.
The 18 new deaths occurred between December 10 and December 15.
A total of 113 people have died in Ontario, mostly since the start of the second wave of Swine Flu which struck in October. Two more deaths in Alberta, three in B.C. and three in Quebec were reported to take the national toll to 390.
The latest detailed analysis by the government for the period Nov. 29 to Dec. 5 shows 8,102 hospitalizations across the country with 1,332 people admitted to ICU and 593 on life support.
The federal agency also said that children under five had the highest rate of hospitalizations while those older than 45 had the highest mortality rate.
“The under 5 year olds continued to have the highest hospitalization rates since the beginning of the pandemic while those 45 years of age and older had the highest mortality rates per 100,000 population,” said the report.
“Comparing the rates of hospitalization, ICU admissions and deaths between those with underlying medical conditions and those without since the beginning of the pandemic, those with underlying medical conditions were almost 5 times more likely to be hospitalized, 7 times more likely to be admitted to ICU and more than 10 times more likely to die compared to those without underlying medical conditions,” said the report which also states that there is a decline in number of hospitalizations and deaths since the second wave of the pandemic crested in mid-November.
“In week 48, 25 laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated paediatric hospitalizations and 1 death were reported through the Immunization Monitoring Program Active (IMPACT) network,” the report said.
“All of these cases were due to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009. 1,306 (pediatric) hospitalizations had been reported since week 17 (April 26): 97.0% of these hospitalizations were officially due to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009. Since the beginning of the pandemic, ten paediatric deaths due to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 were reported through the IMPACT network among children under 16 years of age. The death reported this week was in an infant from AB who had no known medical conditions,” it said.
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Just to put the risks in perspective, for people who are trying to figure out what all the hype means, for healthy people, your chance of dying of h1n1 are about 1 in a million. For people with underlying conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, smokers, ten times the risk, about 1 in 100,000. Is this risk actually higher than those same people’s risk on any other year? A large number of people with these risks have a certain chance of dying. That risk was only a tiny bit higher this year because of h1n1, because their risk of dying randomly from their underlying condition, was the real cause of their death. There also is not much evidence that vaccination would have changed that risk much. It would have reduced the number of people feeling punk for a week.
My sympathies to the families of those who died, just as tragic, regardless of the cause.
The vaccination is unproven, and can be seen by the fact that many more Canadians have had the vaccine than Europeans, but yet no more deaths per capita are recorded there.
Our family received the shot. Why risk dying of something if there is a preventative treatment. I have to trust the Health Minister and believe the vaccination is working. Isn’t disease the number one killer in all of history?
You made the right decision. Those who argue that other diseases kill more people are out of their minds. It is not okay to just sit down and die because other diseases take more lives. Since these deaths are now preventable with vaccine, why take risks with additional deaths across the country? Their argument is people should not worry, since other diseases kill many more. What an incredibly naive argument. Every heatlh officer and doctor we’ve spoken to has said people should get vaccinated. It is also a fact that mitigation measures have made this flu kill fewer people.