The virus that causes COVID-19 can breach the protective blood-retinal barrier, leading to potential long-term consequences in the eye, new research shows.
The blood-retinal barrier is designed to protect our vision from infections by preventing microbial pathogens from reaching the retina where they could trigger an inflammatory response with potential vision loss.
Comments closedAfter trending downward for several months, COVID-19 is on the upswing in Alberta once again.
The province’s respiratory virus dashboard shows a number of key indicators, including case counts, hospitalization numbers and positivity rates, are ticking up.
“Many jurisdictions in Canada have seen a slight bump in late April in the number of COVID cases, the positivity rate and also in their wastewater monitoring,” said Dr. Dan Gregson, an infectious diseases specialist in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.
Comments closed📣 The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has initiated a consultation on infection prevention and control (IPAC). Do you want healthcare workers to wear N95 respirators? Would it be safer with HEPA filters in healthcare settings? Let them know!
Comments closedWednesday, April 17, 2024 (British Columbia) – Independent public health groups Protect Our Province BC, DoNoHarm BC, and Masks4EastVan are calling on the BC government to restore healthcare mask requirements. They are urging British Columbians to call for airborne pathogen protections in clinical settings by joining DoNoHarm BC’s campaign.
Comments closedWhen Alberta Premier Danielle Smith mused in the midst of the debate over her government’s new funding turf war with Ottawa that “we could also establish our own research programs” to ensure ideological balance in academic research, many Albertans suspected they understood precisely what she had in mind.
They thought the United Conservative Party’s Bill 18 is about more than just keeping the Trudeau government from getting credit for helping Alberta municipalities, starved for cash by her government’s policies, and Alberta students and researchers who qualify for federal grants. The so-called Provincial Priorities Act, many also thought, was intended to ensure that what research gets done in Alberta reinforces the UCP’s ideological preferences for unbridled markets and climate change denialism and against vaccines and effective public health measures.
Comments closedIn the earliest days of the AIDS crisis, America ignored the problem, even though people were dropping dead by the thousands.
We’re repeating the mistake now with long COVID. Millions are suffering, but the government has largely turned its back, as new cases emerge with each passing wave.
So people are coming from all over the country this week to Washington D.C., in the footsteps of AIDS activists, to protest at the Lincoln Memorial on March 15th. They’re desperate for their stories to be heard.
Comments closedA study of 1,037,936 US children seen in 17 healthcare systems across the country shows that COVID-19 vaccines are moderately protective against long COVID: 35% to 45%, with higher rates in adolescents. The study was published today in Pediatrics.
The researchers estimated vaccine effectiveness (VE) against long COVID in children aged 5 to 17 years. Though severe COVID-19 cases are less common in children than in adults, persistent symptoms in children do occur.
“It is difficult to establish how much this results from differential reporting of symptoms at different ages, greater difficulty distinguishing long COVID from other childhood illnesses or effects of the pandemic (eg, disruption of seasonal viral patterns, or of school progress,” the authors wrote.
Comments closed📣 Let Ottawa Public Health, Ottawa’s mayor, and city councillors know you want continued access to the city’s COVID-19 dashboard.
✉️ Send letters to let them know you want continued access to updated data in the COVID-19 dashboard, and elsewhere on the City of Ottawa’s website. You can use your own email software to send the letters.
Comments closedImplementation of ventilation standards of at least five clean-air changes per hour, COVID-19 testing, the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and universal wearing of respirators prevented most SARS-CoV-2 transmissions in a California healthcare system from 2020 to 2022, suggests a study published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
For the study, University of California (UC) researchers used electronic health records and movement data of patients and staff to conduct viral genomic and social network analyses to estimate COVID-19 spread in the UC–San Diego Health system. The team analyzed 12,933 viral genomes from 35,666 infected patients and healthcare workers (HCWs) (out of 1,303,622 tests [2.7%]) from November 2020 to January 2022.
Comments closedComments closedThe tide is turning. Thanks to all the people making noise on social media and bugging their families, while continuing to wear masks and build air purifiers no matter what anyone says, there’s a trace of hope.
Due to its rapid growth and potential to add to the respiratory virus burden in Northern Hemisphere countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) today designated JN.1, part of the BA.2.86 SARS-CoV-2 lineage, as its own variant of interest.
The announcement came following an assessment from the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
Comments closedYou wouldn’t attend an outdoor party where measles or smallpox was present. Covid is no different, especially now.
Comments closedProtect our health – please send a letter to support universal masking with respirators in Ontario’s hospitals!
Comments closedCW: cancer, surgery, medical negligence, denial of care, disability grief
As part of DoNoHarm BC’s #Postcards4PublicHealth campaign, we’ve invited British Columbians to share their stories about the lack of Covid safety in BC – particularly the loss of mask protections in healthcare. Many wrote directly to policy makers. Some generously gave us permission to share their stories with the public and the press.
Comments closedDo not listen to powers that be who pretend that getting infected with COVID multiple times is now no big deal. They’re asking you to lower your guard for a nasty virus that can invade the brain, disregulate the immune system and damage the vascular system.
This strategy has led to predictable results — more direct deaths, more excess deaths, more disease and some 1.4 million Canadians reporting some form of long COVID over the last two years.
Comments closedBrain fog isn’t like a hangover or depression. It’s a disorder of executive function that makes basic cognitive tasks absurdly hard.
Comments closedThousands of COVID-19 cases and deaths in California, Oregon, and Washington between March and December 2020 may be attributable to increases in fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) from wildfire smoke, according to a new study co-authored by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Comments closedSingapore is seeing a new Covid-19 wave, with rising cases of infection in the last two weeks, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung on May 18.
“We are at the beginning part of the wave where it is steadily rising,” said Mr Ong. “So I would say the wave should peak in the next two to four weeks, which means between mid- and end of June.”
The Ministry of Health (MOH) said that to protect hospital bed capacity and as a precaution, public hospitals have been asked to reduce their non-urgent elective surgery cases and move suitable patients to facilities like transitional care facilities or back home through Mobile Inpatient Care@Home.
Comments closedCovid-19 levels are about the lowest they’ve ever been in the United States, but another new crop of virus variants once again threatens to disrupt the downward trend as the country heads into summer.
KP.2 — one of the so-called FLiRT variants — has overtaken JN.1 to become the dominant coronavirus variant in the United States, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data through May 11 shows that it’s responsible for more than a quarter of cases in the country, which is nearly twice as many as JN.1. A related variant, KP.1.1, has caused about 7% of cases, CDC data shows.
Comments closedA young child has died of measles in Ontario, marking the first death in the province from the highly contagious virus in more than 10 years, a Public Health Ontario report confirms.
The child, who was under the age of five, was not immunized against the virus, according to the report, which was published on Thursday.
The report also confirms this is the first measles death in the province in more than a decade.
Public Health Ontario says that there have been 22 confirmed cases of measles reported in the province in 2024. Of those individuals, 13 were children and nine were adults. Four of the adults were previously immunized, two were unimmunized, and two had an unknown immunization status.
Comments closedCOVID-19 rapid tests in New Brunswick will stop being distributed through community-based distribution sites when the current supply runs out, which the province says will likely be by the end of next month.
A news release from the New Brunswick government Thursday says, aside from a few specific groups, testing hasn’t been recommended for the general public since March 2023. Separate testing guidelines remain in place for certain settings, such as special care homes.
“However, our guidance has changed throughout the pandemic as the virus has evolved,” said Dr. Yves Léger, the province’s acting chief medical officer of health. “Testing will still be recommended for certain groups but, for the general public, the focus is on staying home when you are ill. That remains the most important measure to take.”
Comments closedRepublican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing forward with their plan to repeal a pandemic-era law that allowed the wearing of masks in public for health reasons, a move spurred in part by demonstrations against the war in Gaza that have included masked protesters camped out on college campuses.
The legislation cleared the Senate on Wednesday in a 30-15 vote along party lines despite several attempts by state Senate Democrats to change the bill. The bill, which would raise penalties for someone who wears a mask while committing a crime, including arrested protesters, could still be altered as it heads back to the House.
Opponents of the bill say it risks the health of those masking for safety reasons. But those backing the legislation say it is a needed response to the demonstrations, including those at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that escalated to police clashes and arrests. The bill also further criminalizes the blockage of roads or emergency vehicles for a protest, which has occurred during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham.
Comments closedComments closedWe did the 2024 Covid-versus-flu rematch thinking that we may find that risk of death in Covid may have sufficiently declined to become equal with the risk of death from flu. But the reality remains that Covid carries a higher risk of death than the flu. […]
Overall, I think this means that we still need to take Covid seriously. Trivializing it as an inconsequential ‘cold,’ as we often hear, doesn’t mesh or align with reality.
In response to April’s removal of mandatory mask mandates in healthcare settings, BC’s health advocacy group DoNoHarm BC, joined by Protect Our Province BC and Masks4EastVan, are leading a campaign to urge the provincial government to reinstate these protections. The groups say that BC health authorities have ignored warnings about ongoing COVID-19 risks and other respiratory threats like measles and tuberculosis.
The decision to remove mask mandates in healthcare settings was announced by the Ministry of Health, “the peak of the respiratory illness season has passed.” Though COVID-19 levels typically lessen in the spring, COVID-19 has not been established as a seasonal illness.
The Peak reached out to Dr. Karina Zeidler who organizes with DoNoHarm BC and is the co-founder of Protect Our Province BC for more information. Zeidler referenced a research article from BC Medical Journal which noted that “for some of these most vulnerable patients, the air in the hospital can be deadlier than the diagnosis that brought them in.” This is due to hospital acquired infections, which can then lead to COVID-19 deaths.
Comments closedHealth officials in Peel Region have confirmed a Mississauga resident has contracted measles, as the total number of cases in the province approaches a 10-year high.
In a news release on Tuesday, Peel Public Health confirmed its second case of measles this year. Officials did not disclose how the man got infected but provided locations where the public may have been exposed.
Those who were at Silver Creek Convenience and Health Care Medical Clinic on May 10 between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., as well as Trillium Health Partners Mississauga Site Emergency Room at 9:15 a.m. on May 10 and 6:15 p.m. on May 11, are being advised to contact Peel Public Health at 905-799-7700 immediately.
Comments closedHealth-care workers who pushed back against being forced to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or face losing their jobs have lost in the BC Supreme Court.
In a ruling released Monday, presiding judge Justice Simon R. Coval says the provincial health officer was right in mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for health-care workers.
The three cases in question were brought to court by a nurse practitioner and two doctors, with all three saying they didn’t want to get the shot.
Comments closedSmoke from wildfires in Western Canada will soon be drifting high overhead, but it poses no health risk in Eastern Ontario, says Environment Canada.
“Taking a look at our guidance and the weather patterns this week and the way things are panning out, it doesn’t look like Eastern Ontario needs to be concerned about its air quality at this time,” Trudy Kidd, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said Monday.
“At best, people might see some haze in the skies in the coming days as the forest fire smoke makes its way through and disperses aloft, but from what we can tell at this time, the particulate matter — and that’s what’s of concern when it comes to forest fires — we’re expecting it to stay aloft,” she said.
Comments closedOntario will need 33,200 more nurses and 50,853 more personal support workers by 2032, the government projects — figures it tried to keep secret but were obtained by The Canadian Press.
The government recently won a fight in front of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to keep those figures under wraps after denying access to them to Global News following a freedom-of-information request from the outlet.
But the same FOI office made the information available to The Canadian Press through a separate request, a situation critics say exposes the frailties and arbitrariness of the access-to-information system.
Comments closedThe first study of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in a large population of adult heart-failure patients suggests that vaccinated participants are 82% more likely to live longer than their unvaccinated peers, according to an analysis presented over the weekend at the Heart Failure 2024 scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in Lisbon, Portugal.
Comments closedWildfires in western Canada will likely bring smoke into Ottawa and eastern Ontario starting on Monday and into Tuesday morning.
CTV’s Your Morning chief meteorologist Kelsey McEwen says smoke could travel as far as Quebec City by Tuesday morning with air quality advisories being issued in five provinces.
“You can see the Jetstream pulling that smoke down south of the border through the Dakotas and back up through the Great Lakes,” McEwen said.
“By tomorrow, this begins to slide toward the Ottawa-Gatineau area, tomorrow morning and out toward Quebec City.”
Comments closedReluctance among dairy farmers to report H5N1 bird flu outbreaks within their herds or allow testing of their workers has made it difficult to keep up with the virus’s rapid spread, prompting federal public health officials to look to wastewater to help fill in the gaps.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to unveil a public dashboard tracking influenza A viruses in sewage that the agency has been collecting from 600 wastewater treatment sites around the country since last fall.
Comments closedJust as the last vestiges of winter gave way to a few days of warm weather, smoke has clouded Alberta’s skies, bringing with it a foreboding memory of summers past, as wildfires continue to burn in the northern parts of the province.
Environment and Climate Change Canada has issued 321 air quality alerts, spanning the province from High Level to Milk River. Alberta Wildfire is reporting 50 active wildfires as of 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, with two currently classified as out-of-control.
One, near Fort McMurray, tripled in size overnight to extend its reach to about 5,500 hectares. The other, burning in Grande Prairie County in northwestern Alberta, had grown to about 1,400 hectares as of 1 p.m. Sunday.
Comments closedEdmontonians saw a slight improvement in the smoky skies Sunday.
The air quality index in the city had dropped from a 10 – very high risk – to a high-risk 9 by Sunday afternoon.
According to Environment Canada, wildfire smoke is harmful even at low concentrations, and residents in affected areas were told to reduce or reschedule strenuous outdoor activities and watch for symptoms such as coughing and throat irritation.
Comments closedComments closedReaction from the disability community has been unanimous that this initial investment creates little impact for removing people with disabilities from poverty. It simply is not enough.
