{"id":383699,"date":"2026-04-17T05:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/383699\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T05:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:13:13","slug":"hospitalizations-for-respiratory-illnesses-are-rising-across-canada-report-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/383699\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses are rising across Canada: report – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information<\/a> (CIHI) has found that hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections are still in the thousands, while vaccine rates drop.<\/p>\n

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Nearly 60,000 people were hospitalized in what the CIHI<\/a> calls \u201cvaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations\u201d across Canada in 2024.<\/p>\n

Influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) accounted for more than half of hospitalizations, while COVID-19 contributed to more than 40 per cent.<\/p>\n

This number of hospitalizations is \u201csignificantly more for our hospitals to handle,\u201d Melanie Jos\u00e9e Davidson, director for the health system performance team at CIHI, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is it\u2019s not as high as it was during the pandemic, but about 40 per cent of the hospitalizations in the last year were still due to COVID-19. So clearly that\u2019s not something we had to deal with before the pandemic and now we have to deal with that on an ongoing basis,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEven though we\u2019re really tired of hearing about it [COVID-19], it\u2019s around to stay and it\u2019s having a fairly large impact on our hospital services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The data shows 142 hospitalizations for every 100,000 Canadians in 2024, an increase from 66 per 100,000 in 2019.<\/p>\n

An average hospitalization for COVID-19 is \u201cabout 23 days,\u201d Davidson says, which results in \u201cabout $28,500 per hospitalization because it\u2019s such a lengthy length of stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, she said that across the country, \u201cour hospitals are full and some of them are operating at over capacity frequently.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Fahad Razak, an internal medicine physician at St. Michael\u2019s Hospital, said that \u201cone of the toughest parts of the job\u201d is seeing the number of people being admitted for these illnesses, calling capacity issues in hospitals a \u201cred flag.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cIncreasing the very things that make hospitals work better, staff and number of beds, they\u2019re not instant fixes. Building hospitals, it would take 10 years from a funding announcement to having a fully functional hospital,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, we Canadians collectively, we have to make the system work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The influx of hospitalizations due to respiratory illnesses makes it harder to treat other patients who enter the health-care system for unrelated issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything happens in that one place. So, when you have a big wave of patients coming in every respiratory virus season, plus with COVID, it can be really almost any time of year, this is an unneeded additional pressure,\u201d Razak said.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tVaccination rates are plummeting\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Government of Canada\u00a0numbers<\/a> report that 26 per cent of Canadian adults were vaccinated against COVID-19 in the fall of 2024. Seniors aged 65 years and older had the highest coverage at 54 per cent.<\/p>\n

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For seasonal influenza, just 33 per cent of adults in Canada were vaccinated during the 2024\u20132025 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s [the CIHI report] telling us is that our public health system at the moment isn\u2019t reaching in [to] our people with the immunizations they need to keep them healthy,\u201d said Natasha Crowcroft, vice-president of infectious diseases and vaccination programs with the Public Health Agency of Canada.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think it is sad because these are people who don\u2019t necessarily need to end up in hospital, and for somebody who is otherwise healthy, if they can get a bad bout of the flu, COVID or RSV [\u2026]\u00a0 if they get those infections, it can end up making them so debilitated that they go from being somebody who\u2019s living healthily at home, on their own, doing their own thing, to being someone who needs long-term care,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The CIHI report also found that adults aged 75 years and older made up almost half (46 per cent) of all hospitalizations for \u201cvaccine-preventable respiratory diseases\u201d in 2024, something that Davidson states \u201chas a very big impact on their health and their recuperation capacity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is why we really encourage health-care providers and people caring for older people in long-term care to get their vaccines, because it\u2019s not just about the individual getting vaccinated. It\u2019s about them being protected by everyone around them,\u201d Crowcroft said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCOVID-19 vaccination rates down in the Maritimes; advocate says limited outreach to blame\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Razak added that many patients express regret in not being immunized sooner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think many patients will say at the end of a process like this, they\u2019re in hospital for a week, of course some people die, but for those who then leave hospital, they\u2019ll say, \u2018I\u2019m going to get my vaccine next year,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a seatbelt. It\u2019s an insurance policy. Getting your vaccine every year in the cycle just means there\u2019s one less thing you have to worry about, and I\u2019d love for more Canadians to think about it that way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has found that hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[275,199172,199173,134,527,111,139,69,56936],"class_list":{"0":"post-383699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-cihi","10":"tag-covid-19-hospitalizations","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-vaccinations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}