🎉 The province has switched to their fall/winter reporting schedule, which means that they are reporting data every week now. This means I will be publishing a BC post every week.
Flu season has definitely started, much earlier than it has in previous years. I suspect it’s because the southern hemisphere is having a very late flu season: flu is peaking in Australia and New Zealand right now. That means that there are more flu introductions than usual when BC is already in “cold weather” mode.
So go get your flu shot as soon as you can!! Unfortunately, the fall flu vaccination campaign hasn’t started yet. I suspect it will start in the first week of October. (Although this press release (2026-09-25) says that Toronto will be starting on Sept 28, so maybe BC will advance the vaccination campaign. 🤞)
COVID-19 levels are definitely going up, but are still pretty low compared to previous waves (and not rising as fast as fluA is).
Charts
From the Viral Respiratory Outcomes page (updated 24 September 2026 with data through 19 September):
From the Viral Pathogen Characterization page with data up to 19 September, as reported on 24 September:
Influenza A has started to make its move already. This is unusually early! In 2023, 2024, and 2025, fluA didn’t hit this level until late November or early December.
Here’s fluA by itself:
COVID-19 is also rising, but in a much more lackadaisical fashion than Flu A.
In the most recent data (ending 29 August 2026) as reported on 3 September 2026, among respiratory virus cases that the province has test data for:
- 45.9% were influenza A or B (almost exclusively A);
- 25.8% were COVID-19;
- 21.7% were entero/rhinoviruses;
- 2.7% were parainfluenza;
- 1.4% were RSV;
- 1.1% were adenoviruses;
- 0.9% were metapneumonia viruses;
- 0.5% were “common cold” coronaviruses.
Wastewater
Jeff says that (unlike last week) the province did provide data this week; he was able to go back and put in the province-supplied numbers for last week, and they were very close to what he scrounged up last week. The trend is still “going up”, but the levels are still way lower than a year ago.
💩💧 From Jeff’s wastewater spreadsheet with data through 13 September 2026:
