Via The Star: Swine flu fallout: many suffer nagging symptoms long after H1N1 subsides. Excerpt:
Marga Cugnet thought she knew what she was in for when she came down with swine flu last October. But the health administrator from Weyburn, Sask., said she was annoyed and somewhat dejected when the potent H1N1 virus left her with lingering symptoms that did not let up until earlier this month.
That’s five months of suffering through a hacking, post-flu cough and bouts of fatigue.
“I never went anywhere without having a bag of cough drops with me because I would just get into a coughing spell that wouldn’t stop,” said Cugnet, the 56-year-old vice-president of primary health with the Sun Country Health Region.
“I knew it could take months to go away, but I didn’t think it would last that long.”
Even though the global pandemic ceased making headlines weeks ago, the impact of the virus remains fresh in the minds of many Canadians who are just getting over an ailment that delivered a lasting one-two punch.
The Public Health Agency of Canada didn’t keep records on the number of Canadians who contracted mild cases of H1N1, mainly because most of them simply stayed home while recovering.
But Dr. Michael Gardam of the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion says blood tests on a sample group in that province suggested that just under 10 per cent of the population was infected in the first wave.
“The second wave was two to three times larger than the first wave, so 30 per cent total is likely reasonable,” said Gardam, the agency’s director of infectious diseases prevention and control.
