Alberta’s flu season is now the second deadliest in recent memory and, while the influenza peak appears to have passed, the virus will be circulating for several months to come.
According to the province’s respiratory virus dashboard, 197 Albertans have died due to influenza so far this season.
That’s the second highest number of deaths since the 2009-10 season, when Alberta launched its universal seasonal flu vaccine program and data became publicly available.
“We are on pace to perhaps be the most deadly year on record, which is quite disappointing,” said Craig Jenne, a professor in the department of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary.
There were 236 deaths during the entire 2024-25 season, 171 in the previous season and 121 in the 2022-23 season.
Death rates based on population are also among the highest reported.
“The biggest concern is that we don’t see this trend turning around. Each of the last four years has been a record year for the number of fatalities here in the province.”
Flu seasons generally run until March, according to Jenne.
“It’s too soon to estimate the total impact of flu this season, although it’s clearly already very high and may be the highest in recent years,” said Maddison McKee, press secretary for the Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services.
Severe outcomes typically drop quickly after the initial flu wave, she said. However, last year they continued to increase for a number of weeks, she noted.
Weekly case counts and hospitalizations have been dropping since the surge hit in December. The latest data shows 370 people were in hospital with influenza as of Jan. 17 and 26 were in the intensive care unit.
According to Dr. Stephanie Smith, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Alberta Hospital, there are likely a number of factors contributing to the high death toll this year, including a predominant strain (H3N2), which can cause more severe disease in older people, a slight mismatch with the vaccine, and low vaccination rates.
“I suspect that this year we’ll have higher death rates than we did last year,” she said, noting a lot of people are ending up in hospital with secondary bacterial infections, such as pneumonia, after they are sick with the flu.
1 in 5 Albertans vaccinated
So far this season, 20 per cent of Albertans have received a flu shot, just shy of the 21 per cent for the entire previous season.
The last time immunization rates were this low was the 2010-11 season, according to the province’s website.
“We absolutely know that if we could increase our vaccination rates, then that would prevent severe disease. That’s a fact,” said Smith.
Flu vaccination rates have been dropping for a number of years in Alberta and other parts of the country.
“The fact that vaccination rates are lower indicates that many of these deaths might have been preventable,” said Dawn Bowdish, an immunologist and professor of medicine at McMaster University.
“My real concern is that Alberta and some of the other provinces won’t have learned the lesson about how important it is to promote vaccination, to give clear and consistent messaging, and to make vaccines easy to get.”
Government responds
The Alberta government said it has given out just over 13,000 more shots so far this flu season than it had at the same time last year.
“[That’s] in spite of the widely reported fact that this year’s vaccine is a mismatch to the main circulating strain, which might have been expected to reduce uptake. Any suggestion that this year’s flu rollout was compromised is simply false based on the data,” said McKee.
Despite concerns about a mismatch with the vaccine this year, health experts have maintained that the shot continues to provide protection against severe illness.
The province also said it continues to promote vaccination and this season’s campaign included advertisements on radio, print, TV and digital platforms. It also provided updates on social media and its website.
“Any suggestion that a realistically achievable uptake of this year’s vaccine could have prevented a heavy impact from the current strain of flu is false,” its emailed statement said.
The province said vaccination rates have dropped for several years, and Alberta’s flu vaccine uptake has historically been well below targeted rates.
“It was around 30 per cent or less well before the pandemic, and even in 2009-10, an exceptional effort to counter the H1N1 flu strain resulted in an overall vaccination rate under 40 per cent,” McKee’s email said.
“This is not to minimize the importance of vaccination, but only to provide the context that actual uptake has not approached the ideal target in the past two decades.”
Jenne, who is also the deputy director of the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases at the University of Calgary, said targets have changed as vaccination rates have dropped.
“Last year’s number for adults in the U.S. was about 45 per cent nationwide. If we could get that, we would likely see a significant impact on the number of people … requiring care within the hospital system,” he said.
“By many measures and many demographics Alberta is still far below even the Canadian average, so it means that there is work to be done and room to improve.”
Jenne said while efforts have been made to promote vaccination, they haven’t had the desired impact.
“We need to look at that trend and say that clearly what is being done is not effective, and we might have to come up with a new approach if we want to see those numbers reversed.”
