New this week: Please see the table at the end of this report for weekly and cumulative number of deaths due to pandemic H1N1 2009, by province/territory, Canada, as of 4 February 2010, 11h00 EDT.
During week 4, all influenza indicators remained low for this time of the year.
Although, there was an increase in the number of influenza-like-illness outbreaks reported this week (11 in schools and one in a residential institution), only 0.6% (13 out of 2318) of the specimens tested were positive for influenza (7 pandemic H1N1 2009, 6 influenza A not-subtyped and one B). It is important to note that most ILI school outbreaks are based on symptoms and are not laboratory-confirmed. Therefore, school outbreaks could be due to influenza or any other respiratory pathogen such as the respiratory syncytial virus for whose detection continued to increase in a number of provinces this week.
Thirty-one hospitalized cases, no ICU admissions and 1 death were reported during week 4. The death was from ON. Only six hospitalized cases reported since the beginning of the pandemic had symptom onset dates in 2010.
On January 27, 2010, the Public Health Agency of Canada announced that the second wave of pandemic H1N1 2009 has tapered off.