1996-1997 influenza season: Canadian laboratory diagnoses and strain characterization.

In collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) international collaborating laboratories, provincial laboratories, and other Canadian hospital and university-based virus laboratories, the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control (LCDC) conducts national surveillance on human influenza viruses. This surveillance monitors influenza activity, detects and describes antigenic changes in the circulating strains of influenza virus in Canada, and estimates, through periodic serosurveys, susceptibility to currently circulating and emerging strains. Canadian influenza surveillance information and actual representative strains are then shared with the WHO’s collaborating centres for influenza to contribute to global influenza monitoring.