Dr. Yves Léger (GNB/Zoom)

Influenza has gotten off to an early start in New Brunswick as it has in other parts of the country.

The acting chief medical health officer said flu season doesn’t usually arrive until late December or January.

Dr. Yves Léger said it’s still too early to tell how this season could play out.

“We can’t know exactly how the virus will behave this year. We don’t know if this flu season will be particularly worse than others or whether or not we’ll see more than one wave of activity due to an early start.”

Léger noted respiratory syncytial virus or RSV is also circulating much earlier than usual.

Léger said most children get infected with RSV by the age of two and right now cases are on the rise.

“We believe that part of the reason is that we have a fairly large group of young kids who wouldn’t have been exposed to this virus early in life due to the measures in place during the pandemic.”

Meantime, Léger said that cases of COVID-19 have been on a downward slide across the province in recent weeks.

But he added it’s difficult to say if that will change as we head into winter.