Busiest week yet for hospitals
Published Saturday November 7th, 2009
This has been the busiest week yet for New Brunswick hospitals dealing with influenza.
The Department of Health says there have been 33 hospitalizations this week relating to pandemic H1N1 flu. Before this week, there had only been five hospitalizations since the outbreak began in April.
"We believe it will continue to grow over the next couple of weeks," Dr. Eilish Cleary, New Brunswick's Chief Medical Officer of Health, said yesterday.
Moncton's two hospitals have also recorded increased emergency room activity over the past week.
The Moncton Hospital says they recorded about 207 emergency room visits on Thursday, with half of those being flu-related. Throughout the week, half or more of all visits to The Moncton Hospital's E.R. were classified as flu-related.
Moncton's Dr. Georges-L. Dumont Regional Hospital is also noting an increase in E.R. visits.
Richard Losier, executive director at the Dumont, said there were about 180 emergency room visits on Thursday, adding that throughout the last week there's been a 30 to 50 per cent increase in E.R. visits over week previous. Losier said many of those people showed up with flu-like symptoms.
All throughout Canada, the second wave of pandemic flu activity is making hospitals busier.
Hospital admissions, intensive-care unit transfers and deaths from H1N1 are three times higher this week than last, according to Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones.
To date, there have been no flu-related deaths reported in New Brunswick.
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If you wear one, make sure you wear it over both your nose & your mouth!! Just because you may be uncomfortable with it covering both, is no reason to leave the nose uncovered; actually you might just as well not wear a mask at all!! If you are serious about not contacting H1N1 or other airborne disease in such close quarters WEAR the mask properly!!