United States (data courtesy of IDEXX Laboratories)

• Canine flu continues to cause problems in the US, particularly the west coast.
• Northern California (471 cases) and Nevada (207 cases) are the hotbeds. As ever, since these data are from diagnostic laboratory submissions, they probably represent the minority of cases (since most dogs with respiratory tract disease don’t typically get tested).
• Range expansion continues in the affected US areas, as the virus spreads gradually into adjacent areas.
• Expansion into some major urban centres such as San Francisco and Sacramento raises concern because of the dog density in those areas.

As for Ontario, I’ll give a more detailed update soon.

• I did another road trip today for sampling and we’re still approaching this from a “search and contain” standpoint.
• We have flu confirmation in three regions; however, no new affected regions have popped up recently (although we remain on the lookout).
• The few new positives we’ve seen in the Muskoka region over the past few days have been expected cases (i.e. dogs that were known to have been exposed and which were being tested as part of our investigations). I can live with that, as long as we can continue to identify and isolate the infected and exposed cases. If we start seeing new unexpected cases turning up I’ll be more concerned.
• The Northumberland cluster is the main concern now as it is less contained.
• I’m getting a lot of questions about how long I’ll continue testing. My general response is “until it’s gone or it’s clear it’s not containable” (money’s another limitation, but that’s another story). Neither of those situations has clearly occurred yet, and I’d hate to look back in a year and think that we didn’t try. I’m not sure what our odds of success are, but we’re still trying to eradicate the virus from Canada.

More updates to follow.