The province is already stocking up on high-strength vaccines for this year's flu season.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says the province is expecting this season to be a bad one.
She says the province is looking to Australia, which has reported an early flu season with unusually high activity for this time of year.
The severity is reported as low, but hospitalizations are three times what's normal for this time.
A spokeswoman says Ontario has already ordered 300-thousand more doses of high-dose flu vaccines than last year, bringing the total order to 1.2 million doses
Director of clinical services with Niagara Region Public Health Angela Alfieri-Maiolo joined Tim Denis on Niagara in the Morning to unpack what this Austalian data means to us.
Alfierei-Maiolo added that while the severity of the flu season in Australia can sometimes be a good predictor of what will happen here, that's not always the case and sometimes it's actually the opposite.
She says the early start to the flu season in Australia could be attributed to normal variation in flu season trends, and might not be something we need to worry about too much.