Canadians who contracted mild cases of swine flu may continue to cough for months. The majority of people infected with H1N1 worldwide showed symptoms such as fever, chills, headache, sore throat, runny nose, muscle aches and general fatigue that lasted for a week to 10 days. With seasonal flu, it's mainly seniors who fall sick and need to be hospitalized. With H1N1 the pattern was different. "We had an otherwise young and healthy population really getting hit quite hard with this," said Dr. Michael Gardam of the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion. "Unfortunately, this is the age group that thinks they are pretty much immune to everything … That's the main reason why governments were pushing the vaccine." The median age of Canadians hospitalized in intensive care for H1N1 was 28, compared with 71 for people admitted with seasonal flu or flu-related pneumonia. |
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