H1N1 vaccine won't be rushed: Aglukkaq

Canada will not release the H1N1 swine flu vaccine sooner than planned, even though other countries have started their vaccination programs, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said Friday.

"We will not skip a step to get the vaccine out into the people's arms and we will not skip a step in terms of reviewing the clinical data that is available," Aglukkaq said in Vancouver.

"We want to ensure that it is safe and effective before we start to distribute the vaccine to provinces and territories and that is key."

The United States, China and Australia have already launched their vaccination programs.

Canadians won't have access to the vaccine until the first week of November.

The scheduling is good, Aglukkaq said, because unlike any other country, Canada will be able to vaccinate everyone who wants and needs the H1N1 shot.

Provinces prepare for vaccine roll-outs

Canada has also purchased H1N1 vaccine that lacks a chemical booster called an adjuvant for use in pregnant women, because there is limited data on the safety of the advjuvant in pregnant women, Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones, said from Vancouver.

Ontario expects to roll out its H1N1 shots at the beginning of November, and the non-adjuvanted form for pregnant women around Nov. 7, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Arlene King, told a news conference in Toronto on Friday.

As of Thursday, 80 deaths in Canada have been linked to the virus, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. 

British Columbia and the Northwest Territories are seeing higher numbers of flu compared with the rest of the country.

"Our rate of prescribing of antivirals has gone up to about 5,000 a week, the lab here is testing about 700 samples a day," B.C.'s  public health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, told reporters Friday.

"Half of those are being positive for influenza, and just about all of those are positive for the pandemic H1N1 strain, so that clearly is the major circulating virus at the present time."

Occasionally, samples test positive for seasonal flu strains, he said.

B.C. deaths

Since the start of the outbreak, B.C. has experienced 78 hospitalizations and eight deaths, Kendall said. In seven of those fatalities,  the patients had an underlying illness. The eighth death is under investigation.

B.C. is expecting the same level of mortality as from seasonal flu, but with more younger people being affected, he added.

Kendall advised people to call telehealth lines if they are concerned about flu symptoms, rather than flooding emergency rooms and labs.

In Atlantic Canada, mayors expressed concerns that their region could be vulnerable to outbreaks because of a lack of a national pandemic plan.

The mayors, meeting in Charlottetown on Friday at the Atlantic Mayors Congress, said the H1N1 virus could leave municipal workers — including police, other emergency personnel and health workers — sick.

Mayors said many municipalities have developed pandemic plans in a "largely unco-ordinated way, without any national support."

'Sobering statistics' in U.S.

Canada is reporting increases in influenza-like illness rates for the third straight week with some provinces now beyond levels normally seen at this time of year, the World Health Organization said in its weekly update on Friday.

In the U.S, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that swine flu is causing an unprecedented amount of illness, with 11 more deaths among children reported in the past week.

Of the 86 children who have died since the pandemic virus emerged in the spring, 43 deaths were reported in September and early October alone, CDC said. In past winters, the agency reported 40 or 50 child deaths for the whole flu season.

Overall in the U.S., deaths from pneumonia and flu-like illnesses have passed what the agency considers an epidemic level.

"These are very sobering statistics," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Canadian health officials said it's unclear why the outbreak is more widespread in the U.S. compared with Canada. The reasons could be as simple as Canadians paying more attention to the warnings and doing a better job of washing their hands, staying home when sick, and coughing and sneezing into their sleeves.

WHO noted that most H1N1 illness continue to be uncomplicated, and people recover within a week without treatment.

But the concern focuses on the small subsets of patients who rapidly develop severe pneumonia often associated with failure of other organs, or worsening of underlying asthma or chronic obstructive airway disease.

"Treatment of these patients is difficult and demanding, strongly suggesting that emergency rooms and intensive care units will experience the heaviest burden of patient care during the pandemic," WHO said.