Northern Health is readying the region for the flu season by rolling out its first clinic dates and reminding the public about the importance of vaccination.
"Each year hundreds die from influenza or complications," like pneumonia, said Dr. Sandra Allison, the health authority's chief medical health officer.
Seniors over 65 are especially vulnerable and infection can lead to later serious health concerns.
"You can spread the influenza virus even before you show symptoms," she said, which include fever cough, sore throat, and a runny nose.
This year's vaccine looks to be a better match than last year, but it's still early in the season so it's hard to predict what strain will dominate, Allison said.
The trivalent vaccine protects against one B strain of the virus and two A strains: H1N1 and H3N2, which became the dominant strain last year and proved problematic for the vaccine to protect against.
"It mutated quite significantly," she said, "making it unrelated enough so that it was like a distant cousin to the strain that was in our vaccine, making the vaccine less effective."
Allison expects to see a bump in the B strain numbers but said the vaccine has a good match with H1N1.
For H3N2, this year's effectiveness is estimated to be between 30 and 50 per cent - a number that might seem low, but is still a better outcome than not acting at all, Allison said.
"We've done a disservice when we think about match and mismatch because that's very black and white."
Instead she compared those numbers to how we might view shopping for food.
"I'm more than happy to take a 50 per cent discount on what my groceries are going to cost me and I definitely would like to see a 50 per cent reduced chance of having severe illness related to influenza."
"It's still a very sneaky little virus that we're having trouble having a perfect match or relatedness for it," she said.
The challenge is one of timing: typically doctors start discussing the next year's vaccine in February, many months before it will be used on the population.
"In that six month period we do see some alteration of the virus as it changes and grows to become more effective at infecting humans," said Allison, adding last year's issue was with the H3N2 strain.
The vaccine is free for children age six months to five years, pregnant women, aboriginal people, those with chronic health issues and for seniors over 65.
Others may be eligible if they live or work with a vulnerable person.
On average, Northern Health sees about 150 positive cases, a misleading number given many people don't get tested.
"Those numbers really do just reflect the tip of the iceberg," she said.
Northern Health expects to bring in about 75,000 doses over the course of the November to April flu season.
Provincewide that number sits at 1.4 million, Germuth said, the same number as last season and up a bit from the 1.3 million brought in 2013 and 2014 season two years ago.
Prince George's upcoming flu clinics are Wednesday and Friday at the Northern Interior Health Unit from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. More information is available online at www.immunizebc.ca.
