I’ve been the chief medical officer for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority since 2022, and I see firsthand how flu season aggravates the pressures on our already strained hospitals. On average, the flu causes 12,200 hospitalizations and 3,500 deaths in Canada every year, placing it among our top 10 causes of death. The onslaught of flu sufferers affects everyone else in the ER as well—people have to wait longer to get stitches, have their broken bones set, get their symptoms assessed. Surgeries are often cancelled because there’s just not enough space in the hospital.

I heard from a colleague about a man who came in to the ER just last month complaining of elbow pain. At the same time, 15 other people came in, many with respiratory issues related to the flu and other viruses. The man’s case was deprioritized while the one physician on shift took care of everyone. By the time it became clear that his pain was actually a stroke symptom, it was too late. He was urgently transferred to a stroke centre, but he still died the next day.

Flu vaccines reduce the number of hospitalizations each year, and genetic sequencing is crucial to creating an effective vaccine. When humans are infected with the flu, our bodies react to antigens, the proteins that help our immune systems identify threats. The flu antigens can vary year to year, creating subtypes of the virus. Scientists analyze positive cases to figure out which subtype is circulating, in order to design a vaccine that will properly fight it. Canada’s own data-gathering is reasonable for our population size, but we generate only a........

© Macleans