Thirty-four influenza cases have already been confirmed in the Red Deer area, and five people have been admitted to hospital.
While there are no deaths so far in this region, out of the 90 Albertans hospitalized with influenza across the province, three have died in the South and Calgary Zones.
So far, 43,290 residents of the Central Zone have had their flu shots, and Alberta Health Services want to see this number grow.
Digby Horne, a medical officer of health for the Central Zone, said everyone is encouraged to get an influenza vaccine, which is available free of charge, to all Albertans six months or older.
It’s particularly advised for people with compromised immune systems, chronic illnesses, seniors (or people who have regular contact with them), as well as children between 6 and 24 months of age. These groups tend to develop much worse complications from the flu.
In the 2016-17 flu season, 64 Albertans died of influenza and 11 of those deaths were in the Central Zone.
But it’s important to remember than only a fraction of all flu cases in the province are ever officially confirmed in a lab, so the influenza data that Alberta Health Services is able to capture in weekly updates is a very small portion of total influenza activity in the province.
Horne said it’s too early to know how bad this flu season will be, or how well the inactivated flu virus in the shot matches the strain of this year’s flu bug. But he believes it’s always a good idea to get the shot.
The only thing known so far about this year’s flu season is that cases of influenza are turning up earlier than last year.
For more information, please visit www.ahs.ca/influenza.