For the first time this influenza season, someone in Alberta has died from a lab-confirmed case of the flu.  

In fact, according to the latest statistics from Alberta Health Services (AHS) three people have died in the past week.  One of the people who passed away was in the Calgary Zone that Airdrie is part of.  The other two were in the Edmonton Zone and in the North Zone of AHS.

The deaths come almost two months after AHS started immunizing people against influenza.  AHS Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jia Hu says the deaths and the number of lab-confirmed cases of the flu show the season has been slow starting but now is beginning to ramp up.

"I would absolutely say that. So it's hard to say what time of year the flu season, what specific month, it's going to ramp up but we're definitely seeing a quick increase in the number of cases of influenza and as soon as we have more cases we'll have more deaths from influenza."

Hu says this flu season is shaping up a bit differently than the season in recent years.  "We're seeing a lot of flu B which is just another sub-species of influenza.  In the past few years, it's been more flu A seasons." 

There have been 911 lab-confirmed cases of the flu.  466 of those have been for Influenza B. 

To date, 181 Albertans have been admitted to hospital with lab-confirmed flu cases.  Just over half, 91 in total, have been in the Calgary Zone.  Nearly 1.2 million people in the province have taken time to get immunized, 513,491 in the Calgary Zone.  Those numbers have flattened out in recent weeks but Hu says it's not because of the busyness of the holiday season.

"This always happens.  What we see is most of out uptake of the flu vaccine happens in the first month that it's available.  I think it has less to do with the holiday season than, the people who want to get it tend to get it when it's out and a lot of people just don't want to get it, which is a real shame given to fact that we do see deaths every year.  Every year 3,500 Canadians are estimated to die with influenza which is a huge number.  It's really important that everyone gets immunized."

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