MONTREAL | The emergency room at CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal is overflowing due to the flu, which has been wreaking havoc on its way since mid-November.
The flu particularly affects children and many parents are worried. They wait to see a nurse, then a doctor.
“Milan has had strong flu symptoms and difficulty breathing for the past five days. This morning he started to draw. He coughs fat, he vomits absolutely everything he ingests because he is too stuffed with secretions, “said Stéphanie Milot, the boy’s mother, in an interview with TVA Nouvelles.
The Dr Gaston de Serres, epidemiologist at the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec, notes that the period is conducive to contagion, at this time of the year.
The influenza A and B strain viruses have been circulating at the same time for several weeks, while B usually appears later in the winter. It particularly affects children who have not been exposed to it before.
“It’s a virus that looks a lot like influenza A, it’s a close cousin. The peculiarity is that it will affect children a little more than adults and will have a severity table sometimes similar to A “, explained the Dr Christian Renaud, microbiologist and infectious disease specialist at CHU Sainte-Justine.
In the general population, 3% to 7% of adults will also have the flu.
In the emergency department of CHU Sainte-Justine, nearly 300 patients are seen day after day.
Besides the mask and regular hand cleaning to prevent contagion, there is also the vaccine. We will know, within a few weeks, if it is effective.
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