Flu cases plummet but COVID may increase this spring: doctor

Dr. Isaac Bogoch recaps the ‘a very challenging flu season’ in the GTA and speaks on finding the right balance of using antibiotics.

The annual winter influenza season is swiftly coming to an end, according to an infectious disease specialist.

However, Canada could see an increase in COVID-19 cases as we head into the spring, he says.

“We had a very challenging flu season, especially in December, where we had a rapid rise in cases and, of course, corresponding hospitalizations associated with that and urgent care visits,” Dr. Isaac Bogoch told CP24 on Tuesday.

“But just around the time of the new year, we started to see cases plummet, they’re continuing to plummet, and I think flu season is not over, but it’s really winding down significantly.”

According to the federal government’s latest Canadian respiratory virus surveillance report, “all indicators of influenza activity continued to decrease” in the country through Feb. 7.

Bogoch said despite the recent decrease in cases, experts noticed that the flu vaccine this year was less effective than it has been in the past, “and that was a significant contributor to this really nasty flu season that we’re working our way out of,” he added.

More COVID-19 cases likely

In the coming months, there is likely to be a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, Bogoch said, as we become further removed from the last large-scale COVID vaccine rollout, which took place in the fall.

“We know it ebbs and flows at various times of the year, and I don’t think anyone would bat an eye if we saw a rise in COVID cases over the course of the spring as flu season and RSV season winds down,” he said.

“We’ve seen that in years past, and we’ll probably continue to see it in the future.”

Health Canada’s current immunization guide recommends once-a-year COVID-19 vaccinations for those at increased risk of contracting a serious infection, including seniors, residents of long-term care, pregnant women and people with certain underlying health conditions.

“Now, there’s a small subset of people that may need a vaccine more regularly,” said Bogoch.

“These are very, very severely immunocompromised individuals. Like anything else, it’s extremely important to chat with a health-care provider to see if this is the right approach.”

Antibiotics and gut health

As the hectic flu season dies down, an important topic on the minds of many health-care professionals is antibiotics, said Bogoch, and how their overuse can pose risks to the overall health of patients.

“We don’t want to overuse antibiotics for multiple reasons; number 1, it’s a precious resource, and if we use it inappropriately, the bacteria become resistant, and this precious resource doesn’t work anymore,” he explained.

“We’re now seeing very significant global ramifications of that, with up to four million deaths per year because the drugs that we rely on so heavily don’t work as well as they used to.”

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Secondly, Bogoch said, antibiotics can impact the health of individuals who take them, particularly when it comes to the gut. An antibiotic’s job is to kill bacteria, and it isn’t selective when it does, he said.

“They don’t just take out the bad bacteria, they wipe the floor with many bacteria, including good bacteria,” said Bogoch, “not just in our gut, but there’s good bacteria elsewhere, in and on our bodies, and we’re, for lack of a better word, nuking them with antibiotics.”

Still, if you’ve contracted a bacterial infection, the most important step is to kill any harmful bacteria, and that can only be done with an antibiotic, Bogoch noted. However, some doctors recommend taking probiotics at the same time in order to restore healthy gut microbes.

“Other people just simply ingest yogurt,” he said. “It’s cheap, it does the exact same thing, and it can be very helpful, so there’s a few tools that many physicians will use when they’re prescribing antibiotics to restore or help maintain gut health.”