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Two people in Newfoundland and Labrador have died of influenza so far this season, according to the province’s online health data hub.
The deaths happened in late 2025, but it’s not clear when and where in the province they occurred.
CBC News has asked Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services for clarifying details but the agency has not yet provided them. Dr. Mark McKelvie, a medical officer with the health authority, spoke with The St. John’s Morning Show’s Darrell Roberts about what makes this year’s flu season different.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What are we seeing so far in terms of flu numbers?
A: We are truly into our flu season. We started seeing the numbers pick up quite quickly in Decembe… with cases going up the last two weeks.
Are they going up more than normal? Is this abnormal?
It changes year to year, as you may know. And so the numbers aren’t dramatically abnormal, certainly, when we look at our case numbers. They’re not higher than we’ve ever seen before, but it’s early days of our season, right? So we still have to see where things go.
What would be different about this season than last season is that our cases are going up higher earlier. That doesn’t mean that they will stay high for longer, we just have to see how things go.
Tell me more about the H3N2 strain — is that more contagious?
H3N2, we haven’t seen it for awhile. But what is different this year is there is another kind of variant of it called subclade K, which we haven’t seen before. That’s what has people a bit concerned. So, certainly early signs from other jurisdictions from the [United] States, other parts of Canada, is that it does seem to be acting more aggressively in terms of people becoming quite sick and particularly younger kids becoming quite sick.
What are the symptoms for H3N2?
They’d be quite similar to other flu-like symptoms. So you’re looking at people with fever, cough, sometimes congestion, the aches, the fatigue. What we’re seeing with some reports of differences with this year’s strain of subclade K variant is that we’re seeing kids with fevers for longer time periods — maybe for five to seven days.
Maybe more people have GI symptoms, what I mean by that is diarrhea, upset stomach, which we sometimes see with flu, but we’re seeing a bit more of that this year.
Dr. Mark McKelvie, a medical officer of health with Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services, says the province started seeing flu numbers increase quickly in December. (CBC)
A lot of people might use the words flu and cold interchangeably, even though they’re not. What’s the difference between a flu and a cold?
In terms of symptoms, it might be hard to distinguish. So you might have very similar symptoms with a cold and a flu …Typically, we think of colds as they can have symptoms at the milder end. But certainly influenza, for some people, have more severe symptoms. And that’s where we get really worried about influenza. Every year it causes lots of death, every year it causes multiple hospitalizations. We don’t see that with the “cold” or the milder respiratory viruses.
How can people protect themselves from these illnesses?
I think the most important thing for all these things, but certainly influenza, is vaccination.
For anyone who is six months or older, you’re eligible to get a free influenza vaccine. And certainly when we’re looking at this year, and we’re worried about the impact on children, we’d really recommend that we need to boost our vaccine rates in our younger kids. So if you’re a parent listening, I encourage you to check and see if your child is up to date with their flu vaccine for the year. But that’s certainly for everyone across the population.
Number two, as I alluded to earlier, these are infectious. These are things that spread, these are communicable. So if you’re sick, and you might be contagious, we recommend that you stay home, avoid contact with people. If you’re not able to do that, be very mindful of where you’re going when you have symptoms.
So we really encourage people to stay away from hospitals and health-care centres during this time, because because we anticipate there is going to be a burden on them already. We don’t need an introduction and transmissions at those places, and getting people who are vulnerable already, sick.
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