Overview
- Ontario is offering shots this week to seniors, long-term care residents, hospital staff and patients, with eligibility expanding to everyone six months and older on Oct. 27.
- Most other provinces and territories plan mid-October starts, with Alberta opening to vulnerable groups on Oct. 1 and to all residents on Oct. 20, and Yukon beginning Oct. 6 in Whitehorse and Oct. 16 elsewhere.
- Doctors identify young children, seniors and people with asthma or COPD as at heightened risk of severe influenza illness.
- Specialists stress the vaccine mainly reduces illness severity and hospitalization risk, and that immunity builds over roughly two weeks after the shot.
- A national pediatric study using the IMPACT network recorded 12,887 hospitalizations and 80 deaths from 2004 to 2022, with most fatalities in children under five and only about one quarter of patients vaccinated.