{"id":399283,"date":"2026-01-09T23:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/399283\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T23:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:16:15","slug":"flu-numbers-in-canada-remain-high-but-trending-down-after-winter-holidays-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/399283\/","title":{"rendered":"Flu numbers in Canada remain high but trending down after winter holidays – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flu cases across Canada reached a three-year high over the holidays but have since stabilized or decreased heading into the new year, new figures released Friday showed.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The latest national influenza<\/a> data accounts for the holiday period of Dec. 14 to Jan. 3.<\/p>\n

During the week of Christmas, Health Canada<\/a> said the percentage of positive tests for influenza reached 33.3 per cent, \u201cthe highest value recorded in the past three seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following week, the rate of tests coming back positive for flu decreased to just over 27 per cent.<\/p>\n

Health Canada said the most recent week of data that ended Jan. 3 showed \u201cindicators of influenza activity were high but were either stable or decreasing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It said the highly infectious and deadly H3N2 strain<\/a> was \u201cpredominant\u201d among influenza A cases detected in laboratory samples.<\/p>\n

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Cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) have risen since the last update on Dec. 19, with 3.4 per cent of tests returning positive, while COVID-19 cases also rose to 5.3 per cent positive tests.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIndicators of RSV activity continue to increase slowly and some indicators of COVID-19 activity increased,\u201d Health Canada said.<\/p>\n

Hospitalizations for all flu strains have remained stable since the last update on Dec. 19, with 12.4 patients per 100,000 of the population reported per week.<\/p>\n

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There were 343 reported outbreaks across the country in the most recent week of data, Health Canada said, 72 per cent of which were related to influenza. The number marked the second week-over-week decline from a peak of 457 outbreaks reported during the week ending Dec. 20.<\/p>\n

Thirteen regions in five provinces \u2014 Alberta, Prince Edward Island, southern Ontario and Quebec, and British Columbia\u2019s Lower Mainland \u2014 saw \u201cwidespread\u201d influenza activity during the most recent reporting period.<\/p>\n

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The dominant strain being observed in Canada and the United States is the influenza A(H3N2) strain, including a subvariant \u2014 A(H3N2) subclade K \u2014 the World Health Organization said.<\/p>\n

In Ottawa, three children between the ages of five and nine have died from influenza A-related complications, with the city\u2019s health officials urging anyone over the age of six months to get vaccinated.<\/p>\n

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In November, the Children\u2019s Hospital of Eastern Ontario saw eight times more children test positive for influenza compared with the same month last year and double the number of children who needed to be hospitalized with the flu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe flu is more than a bad cold,\u201d the hospital, colloquially known as CHEO, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren under five are at a higher risk of severe illness from influenza because they have smaller airways, and their immune systems are still developing. Even healthy kids can become seriously ill, and flu spreads quickly in schools and child-care settings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014With files from Global\u2019s Uday Rana<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flu cases across Canada reached a three-year high over the holidays but have since stabilized or decreased heading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,50363,64229,84,12537,44],"class_list":["post-399283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-flu","tag-h3n2","tag-health","tag-health-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}