A new COVID-19 variant appears to be on its way to taking over in Alberta, with one expert predicting it likely already accounts for the lion’s share of the province’s cases.
JN.1 is an offshoot of BA.2.86, which has evolved, like many of its predecessors, to better evade our immune defences.
It is now the dominant strain in Canada. Data from the Public Health Agency of Canada shows it accounted for about 66 per cent of COVID-19 cases nationwide by the end of December.
Comments closedThe head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information.
Comments closedPeople who had multiple infections were three times more likely to be hospitalized for their infection up to six months later than those who only got COVID-19 once, and were also more likely to have problems with clotting, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney, and mental-health symptoms. The risks appeared to increase the more infections people experienced.
Comments closedThe COVID-19 vaccination campaign did not result in millions of deaths, as claimed by a former University of Ottawa professor during an interview on Monday’s Network X show with conspiracy activist Alex Jones.
Denis Rancourt, a former University of Ottawa professor, was invited this week to participate in Alex Jones’ Infowars. The appearance came three days after Tucker Carlson’s show referred to Rancourt’s claims that COVID-19 vaccines have killed at least 17 million people worldwide.
Comments closedInterior Health (IH) has completely withdrawn its COVID-19 rapid antigen tests (RAT) from its facilities.
This is according to an internal memo obtained by Global News.
“(The rapid tests) are not reliable for diagnosis of COVID-19,” the memo stated.
“As such COVID-19 RAT testing can no longer be used to direct clinical care or infection prevention and control measures, and must be discontinued immediately in Interior Health affiliated emergency rooms, hospitals, long-term care facilities (and) outpatient settings.”
Comments closedCOVID-19 has killed 17 more New Brunswickers, including six over the holidays, while influenza has claimed nine lives. These are the first flu deaths of the season and they include a child under four, the latest data from the province shows.
Dr. Yves Léger, the province’s acting chief medical officer of health, held a rare meeting with reporters Tuesday because of the rise in respiratory illnesses.
Comments closedCovid-19 is still infecting and reinfecting millions of people around the world — causing more and more people to develop Long Covid. But public health and government agencies worldwide have failed to warn people about Long Covid and support those affected, and still aren’t effectively funding research to find effective treatments.
In response to the lack of support, people with Long Covid in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Europe are buying billboard ads to raise awareness about the disease and promote the urgent need for clinical trials. These billboards aim to do the job of public health authorities, advocates who spoke to The Sick Times explained.
Comments closedSpain’s government proposed a nationwide mandate for people to wear masks in hospitals and health clinics on Monday, and Italy said respiratory illness infection rates had hit a record, as flu and COVID spread across Europe.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control recommended that people on the continent stay home if they feel sick, and consider wearing masks in crowds or healthcare settings, with flu spreading as it typically does this time of year but hitting some countries harder than others.
Comments closedWhen the pandemic hit American soil, the country faced a tragic lack of leadership in President Donald Trump, a man who famously did not bother to read his daily briefs. He also spent a lot of time on Twitter, and not only religiously watched Fox News but took policy cues from it. In the emerging crisis — which happened to coincide with Trump’s reelection campaign gearing up — while scientific experts couldn’t get the ear of the president, social media and right-wing media very much could and did.
Trump, who had promised the pandemic would simply disappear, came to embrace a too-good-to-be-true pandemic “solution” in the form of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which had captured the excitement of Silicon Valley — and the attention of Elon Musk on Twitter. Though the repurposing of existing drugs is not inherently a bad idea, Team Trump was not interested in engaging in the scientific process to test for safety and efficacy. And it certainly wasn’t the only time Musk or Trump recklessly took off with an idea because they wanted it to be true.
Comments closedThe winter COVID-and-flu season is ramping up in California and nationwide, with doctors and other experts saying the worst of the respiratory illness season is still to come.
New data show pronounced recent jumps in the rate at which coronavirus and flu tests are coming back positive, as well as the number of hospital-admitted patients testing positive for the viruses. Workplaces are also seeing higher numbers of employees call in sick due to infections.
National wastewater data suggest this winter could see the highest number of coronavirus infections occurring during any given week since the first Omicron wave began in fall 2021.
Comments closedEmergency room wait times are up at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney, N.S., mostly due to seasonal flu and respiratory illnesses and a resurgence of COVID, according to an emergency department doctor.
“The emergency department is crazy busy,” said Dr. Margaret Fraser, a family physician who does shifts at the regional ER. “We’re seeing very long wait times for patients — 12, 14, 18 hours — and high volumes of patients with respiratory illness, unfortunately.”
Comments closedThe estimated effectiveness of the updated COVID-19 vaccine among people aged 60 and older in the Netherlands was 70.7% against hospitalization and 73.3% against intensive care unit (ICU) admission in fall and early winter 2023, according to a study published yesterday in Eurosurveillance.
Researchers at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment and University Medical Center Utrecht parsed data on hospitalizations with admission dates from October to December to estimate the effectiveness of the XBB.1.5 Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine among recipients of at least one previous vaccination. The study included 2,050 hospitalized adults aged 60 and older, 14.4% of whom had received the 2023 COVID-19 vaccine.
Comments closedA new COVID-19 subvariant, known as JN.1, has emerged and is now the prevailing strain across Canada, prompting health experts to caution that it may be more infectious and could even have extra symptoms.
Currently, the subvariant makes up the highest proportion of all COVID-19 variants, accounting for more than half (51.9 per cent) of all infections in Canada, according to the latest data from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
JN.1 was first detected in Canada on Oct. 9, and since then has rapidly increased.
Comments closedNearly four years after B.C. confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus that would come to be known as COVID-19, the province begins 2024 with 219 people in hospital with the disease.
That’s a notable jump since the last update provided by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control on Dec. 21, when there were 153 test-positive patients in hospital across the province.
In its latest update, the BCCDC says this roughly 43-per-cent increase in the hospitalized population “is being monitored.”
Comments closedHealth Canada has approved a new vaccine geared toward protecting two groups most severely affected by the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV): newborns, who would receive antibodies through maternal immunization, and Canadians over 60.
Pfizer Canada’s bivalent vaccine, called Abrysvo, aims to prevent lower respiratory tract disease caused by the virus.
It is the first RSV vaccine in Canada approved for use in pregnancy to provide protection for infants from birth to six months of age, and the second approved for seniors aged 60 and over.
Comments closedMany people with long Covid feel tired, unwell and in pain for lengthy periods after exercise, and researchers say they now know why.
Experts say they have evidence that biological changes are to blame, such as severe muscle damage, mitochondrial problems and the presence of microclots in the body.
“It’s really confirming that there is something inside the body going wrong with the disease,” said Dr Rob Wüst, an author of the study at Vrije Universiteit (Free University) Amsterdam.
Long Covid is thought to affect tens of thousands of people in the UK alone, and many experience a worsening of symptoms for weeks after a single bout of exercise.
Comments closedThe pandemic is far from over, as evidenced by the rapid rise to global dominance of the JN.1 variant of SARS-CoV-2. This variant is a derivative of BA.2.86, the only other strain that has carried more than 30 new mutations in the spike protein since Omicron first came on the scene more than two years ago. This should have warranted designation by the World Health Organization as a variant of concern with a Greek letter, such as Pi.
By wastewater levels, JN.1 is now associated with the second-biggest wave of infections in the United States in the pandemic, after Omicron. We have lost the ability to track the actual number of infections since most people either test at home or don’t even test at all, but the very high wastewater levels of the virus indicate about 2 million Americans are getting infected each day.
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