Volume 15, Number 12—December 2009
Dispatch
Respiratory Infection in Institutions during Early Stages of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, Canada
Alex Marchand-Austin, David J. Farrell, Frances B. Jamieson, Nino Lombardi, Ernesto Lombos, Sunita Narang, Holy Akwar, Donald E. Low, and Jonathan B. Gubbay
Table 1
Respiratory outbreak submissions to Ontario, Canada, public health laboratories by geographic location and season*
| Region | Influenza season submissions |
Spring submissions |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007–08 | 2008–09 | 2008 | 2009 | ||
| Ontario | 671 | 543 | 117 | 112† | |
| Greater Toronto area‡ | 139 | 101§ | 34 | 21 | |
*Influenza season is delineated as October 1–April 19; spring season is delineated as April 20–June 12.
†Specimens from 83 of the 112 outbreaks were tested by the RVP assay.
‡Greater Toronto Area includes submissions by Peel, York, and Toronto Public Health Units.
§Specimens from 78 of the 101 outbreaks were tested by the Luminex xTAG Respiratory Viral Panel (Luminex Molecular Diagnostics, Toronto, Ontario, Canada).
