Health minister says Ontario’s flu season peaked over the holidays

Ontario’s health minister says a “particularly challenging” flu season appears to have peaked over the holidays, but won’t explain why the government didn’t ask its top doctor to hold a public briefing on the rising number of cases.

Speaking at an unrelated event on Monday, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said she believed flu cases had already peaked for the season, accepting they had strained the province’s health-care system.

“In terms of the flu season, it has been particularly challenging for our Ontario residents and health-care workers, as well as the hospitals,” Jones said.

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“I will say that the data has shown that it seems to have peaked over the Christmas holidays.”

As the flu season got underway in earnest, Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, issued a general statement encouraging people who had not already been vaccinated to do so and take other precautions to stop the spread of flu.

Unlike during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, he did not hold any kind of briefing to promote the message. Critics say it was a missed opportunity.

“This government has not done the work to engage in health promotion activities to try and get people vaccinated in the first place,” Dr. Adil Shamji, the Ontario Liberal health critic, said. “That is one of many reasons this flu season has hit Ontarians so hard.”

Jones skirted three separate questions about where Moore had been and why he didn’t hold a major briefing to try to increase vaccination rates and awareness before cases hit a holiday peak.

“Dr Kieran Moore issued a very specific encouragement, reinforcement of the value of receiving a flu shot early in December when we started to see the projected numbers,” Jones said.

Later, she added: “We have made sure the supply is there and the knowledge and information is there. None of this would have happened without Dr. Moore.”