Health officials in London and Middlesex say there were dozens of new cases of Influenza in the community last week, including four that were fatal.
The Middlesex-London Health Unit's weekly Influenza surveillance report, released Tuesday, shows there were 51 new laboratory confirmed cases between January 22 and 28. Influenza A made up 50 of those cases, while the other was Influenza B.
Twenty-eight people had to be hospitalized and four died.
All of those figures are higher than the previous week.
But Tristan Squire-Smith, manager of infectious disease control at the health unit, says it's not clear if the worst is behind or ahead of us.
"We don't know if we've hit the peak yet or not because we continue to have cases come in week over week," he says. "Flu is still very much circulating in our area."
The one bright spot in the report is the fact that there were no new reported outbreaks in long-term care facilities.
But the report also showed 25.3% of patients at pediatric emergency departments presented with respiratory symptoms and fever, while 30 schools reported higher than usual absenteeism. Both figures are higher than last week.
Since September 1, the health unit says there have been 270 lab-confirmed cases of Influenza in Middlesex-London. Of those, 147 have required hospitalization. There have been 11 deaths and 24 outbreaks in long-term care facilities.
