Flu cases see big jump in province in recent weeks

The number of confirmed cases of influenza in New Brunswick has jumped from 14 over Christmas to 95 in the past week.

The province's chief medical officer of health says that is a normal number of flu cases for this time of year.

But Dr. EilishCleary says outbreaks in other provinces there have been 10 deaths in Alberta alone haveled to a close watch on what is happening with flu cases here.

"Because of what they're seeing in Alberta and other provinces and the States, we're putting in some extra measures in place to try and track and monitor so we will be able to detect early if there's anything unusual going on here," said Cleary.

"So we actually have asked the regional health authorities to report to us if they're getting hospitalizations or ICU cases or hopefully, not deaths. But if we do see any, we'll be able to track that."

Most of the reported cases in New Brunswick are of the H1N1 variety.

But unlike in 2009 when H1N1 was new, the strain is part of this year's flu vaccine, so Clearysaid it doesn't pose as big a threat.

"At that stage we were quite concerned about it because it was a totally new virus, and so very little immunity in the population and no vaccine," said Cleary.

"So it's quite a different situation here this year, because we have had some percentage of the population that will be immune to it and we have a vaccine that contains the relevant components."

Clearysaid at this point, New Brunswick isn't affected as severely as other provinces.

Although many people travel between Alberta and New Brunswick for work, at this point Cleary doesn't expect that to have a major effect on the number of flu cases in New Brunswick.