Dr. Kirstin Weerdenburg, a pediatric emergency physician at the IWK Health Center in Halifax, says she has diagnosed more cases of walking pneumonia in the last six months than in her 15 years of practice.
However, during the month of December, she noticed fewer cases of walking pneumonia, a less serious illness caused by the bacteria Mycoplasma pneumoniae. On the other hand, the doctor sees more children presenting to the emergency room with seasonal flu or RSV.
Doctor Jesse Papenburg, specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and microbiologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, makes the same observation.
As the outbreak of walking pneumonia subsides, Dr. Papenburg says the flu season has started again with a vengeance. Although many cases of flu are mild, he points out that the disease poses a higher risk for young children and people over 75 years old.
This influenza virus is responsible for the hospitalization of more than a thousand children in Canada each year, according to data from the Public Health Agency.
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