Month: December 2025

Published by: CityNews
Published on: December 21, 2025
By Rachel Morgan

The volunteer-led organization Ontario School Safety is renewing calls to the Ontario government to improve indoor air quality in schools.

The call comes as Ontario sees a rapid increase in cases of the flu, particularly impacting young children.

In April, 2021, the Government of Ontario announced it was investing over $130 million, in addition to funds from the Canadian government, to upgrade school infrastructure to protect children from COVID-19. The majority of this funding was earmarked for ventilation projects to improve indoor air quality.

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influenza

Flu season has hit Canadians hard and early, as cases continues to rise

Published December 19, 2025

Published by: The Globe and Mail
Published on: December 19, 2025
By Alanna Smith

At a neighbourhood Christmas party in Ottawa earlier this month, there were all the usual holiday delights: festive decor, treats and even a visit from the big man up North. It was an evening to remember for Christine Guptill, but not in the way she had imagined.

Tucked into a party room at Royale Ranch, a horse farm in the city’s south, there were nearly 40 people at the party – half children, half adults. Ms. Guptill said some children were coughing and she overheard one family say they had left their sick kid at home.

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influenza

Flu hospitalizations expected to ‘increase sharply,’ officials warn, as cases surge and vaccinations lag

Published December 19, 2025

Published by: CBC News
Published on: December 19, 2025

The Latest

Data from the Public Health Agency of Canada released today shows the number of flu outbreaks across the country is still rising, and hospitalizations due to the virus are set to surge in the coming weeks.
Health officials across the country are reporting a surge in cases of influenza this month, especially among children and youth.
There’s particular concern about low vaccination uptake this winter, with many provinces reporting only around 20 per cent of eligible residents have received the flu vaccine.
This year’s available vaccine isn’t a good match for the current predominant strain, H3N2 — but doctors are urging people to get their shots regardless.
Got a question about flu season? Send it to ask@cbc.ca.

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long COVID

Workplace exposures tied to higher risk of long COVID

Published December 18, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: December 18, 2025
By Laine Bergeson

Work-related factors may increase the risk of developing long COVID, according to a new population-based study from Spain.

The findings, published in BMJ Occupational & Environmental Medicine, suggest that the primary work-related drivers of increased long COVID risk were irregular or limited use of respirators, close contact with coworkers and/or the public, inability to physical distance, and use of public transportation to commute to work.

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Nova Scotia

Masks now required at all Nova Scotia Health sites

Published December 18, 2025

Published by: CTV News
Published on: December 18, 2025
By Natalie Lombard

Nova Scotia Health says masking is required throughout all its facilities beginning Thursday.

However, the health authority says masks are not required in:

administrative buildings
private offices, nursing stations, or conference rooms (if no patients are present)
cafeterias (when people are seated)
patient bed-spaces (for patients, partners, and visitors)

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Alberta

Alberta quietly ends public reporting of COVID outbreaks in acute care

Alberta’s government said the province is under no legal obligation to continue publishing the data in a “post-pandemic context.”

Published December 17, 2025

Published by: St. Albert Gazette
Published on: December 17, 2025
By Brett McKay

Alberta’s government quietly eliminated its public reporting dashboard of COVID-19 outbreaks in acute care facilities, saying the province is under no legal obligation to continue publishing the data in a “post-pandemic context.”

Alberta Health Services’ (AHS) acute-care outbreaks webpage provided weekly public reports on COVID-19 outbreaks in AHS and Covenant Health facilities, including the location where an outbreak had been reported, the date the outbreak was declared, the number of units affected, and how many patients and health-care workers were infected.

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vaccines

Most Canadians still confident in vaccines, but hesitancy has increased, poll says

Published December 17, 2025

Published by: The Canadian Press
Published on: December 17, 2025
By Nicole Ireland

TORONTO – A new poll says that about three-quarters of Canadian adults still have confidence in vaccines, but hesitancy has increased over the last five years.

The survey conducted by Leger Healthcare and released on Tuesday says 74 per cent of respondents said they were either “very confident” (42 per cent) or “somewhat confident” (32 per cent) in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

But about a quarter of respondents said they are less confident than they were before.

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long COVID

Occupational Factors Strongly Influence Long-COVID Risk

A large Catalan cohort study shows that healthcare, social care, education, retail, and transport workers are at higher risk for Long-COVID

Published December 16, 2025

Published by: ISGlobal
Published on: December 16, 2025

Work-related factors play a significant and independent role in the risk of developing Long-COVID, shows a new study based on the COVICAT cohort and led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Turin and the Germans Trias i Pujol Institute (IGTP). The findings, published in BMJ Occupational & Environmental Medicine, highlight that a substantial share of Long-COVID could be prevented through targeted workplace measures and policies.

The public health impact of Long-COVID is far from over. Beyond ongoing infections that continue to cause illness and deaths worldwide, millions of people are living with lasting health consequences. Globally, around 6 in every 100 COVID-19 cases develop Long-COVID, amounting to 400 million affected people and an annual economic impact of roughly 1 trillion dollars, or 1% of the global economy.

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cognitive issues

COVID-19 leaves a lasting mark on the human brain

Published December 15, 2025

Published by: Griffith University
Published on: December 16, 2025
By Emma O’Connor

COVID-19 does not just affect the respiratory system, but also significantly alters the brain in people who have fully recovered from the infectious disease, highlighting the long-term neurological impact of the virus.

Researchers from Griffith University’s National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Disease (NCNED) used advanced MRI techniques to ascertain the neurological implications of COVID-19 compared with those who had never been infected.

The research provided compelling evidence that even in the absence of ongoing symptoms, prior infection with the virus could leave a measurable imprint on the brain.

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Ontario

3 children die from influenza A-related complications in Ottawa and eastern Ontario region

Published December 15, 2025

Published by: CTV News
Published on: December 15, 2025
By Josh Pringle

Three children have died from flu-related complications in the Ottawa area this month, as officials warn of a “rapid and significant rise” in influenza A cases.

In a statement released Monday morning, Ottawa Public Health said three children between the ages of five and nine have died from influenza A-related complications in the Ottawa and Eastern Ontario Health Unit regions during the first two weeks of December.

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vaccines

COVID shot reduces risk of severe illness, premature birth in pregnancy, study says

Published December 15, 2025

Published by: The Canadian Press
Published on: December 15, 2025
By Nicole Ireland

TORONTO – A new study says the COVID-19 vaccine protects pregnant women from getting severely ill or giving birth prematurely.

Researchers with the Canadian Surveillance of COVID-19 in Pregnancy (CANCOVID-Preg) program, led by the University of British Columbia analyzed public health and clinical records of 19,899 pregnant people diagnosed with COVID between April 5, 2021 and Dec. 31, 2022.

That time period covered infections with both Delta and Omicron variants in eight provinces and one territory.

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Trump regime

Health minister says she worries about U.S. public health decisions harming Canadians

U.S. panel voted to remove universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendations for infants

Published December 13, 2025

Published by: CBC News
Published on: December 13, 2025
By Benjamin Lopez Steven

Health Minister Marjorie Michel says she worries about how recent actions by U.S. public health agencies, like removing a universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for American infants, could hurt Canadians’ health.

“It’s a big worry for me,” Michel said in an interview on CBC’s The House that airs Saturday morning. “The U.S. is our closest neighbour. And it’s a big neighbour.”

“It’s absolutely crucial to work with provinces and territories to be all on the same page, for example, on vaccination,” Michel told host Catherine Cullen.

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hepatitis B

Expert calls for Hep B vaccines at birth in Ontario, saying kids are falling through the cracks

Dr. Jordan Feld wants this province to follow international guidance and vaccinate children at birth.

Published December 12, 2025

Published by: Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 12, 2025
By Elizabeth Payne

A leading liver expert is calling on the Ontario government to re-evaluate its hepatitis B vaccination strategy, saying some children are falling through the cracks and getting diagnosed with hepatitis B virus (HBV) before vaccines are offered at age 12.

That puts them at high risk for a life of chronic illness and even liver cancer that could have been prevented, says Dr. Jordan Feld, director of the Toronto Centre for Liver Disease at the University Health Network and a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. He wants Ontario to follow international guidance and vaccinate children at birth.

His comments come amid an outcry in the United States after a Centres for Disease Control panel, appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted to scrap birth doses of the vaccine. That decision has been heavily criticized by experts, who say the change is not based on science and will put children at risk.

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Ottawa-Gatineau

Return of mandatory masking in Outaouais hospitals

Published December 9, 2025

Published by: Radio-Canada
Published on: December 9, 2025
By Benjamin Vachet

The Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de l’Outaouais has decided to reinstate mandatory mask wearing upon entry into its care facilities.

Starting on Tuesday, wearing a mask is mandatory in hospital centres, including the outpatient ward, the Pierre-Janet mental health hospital (including units 5 and 6 of the juvenile wing), the Physical rehabilitation centre, La RessourSe, residential and long-term care centres and seniors’ homes and alternative housing.

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research

Long-COVID research just got a big funding boost: will it find new treatments?

The German government has committed half a billion euros to research into long COVID and other post-infection syndromes.

Published December 8, 2025

Published by: Nature
Published on: December 8, 2025
By Michael Marshall

In a major boost to research on long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), the German government has announced that it will provide €500 million (US$582 million) in research funding to support a National Decade Against Post-Infectious Diseases from 2026 to 2036.

Germany is one of many countries facing an unprecedented health burden owing to long COVID and other post-infection syndromes since the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost one in five people in a German cohort had long COVID in 2022, and around one in seven people in the United States were affected by long COVID by late 2023. This translates to a considerable burden on health care and the economy — the syndrome is estimated to cost the world economy US$1 trillion every year.

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immune dysfunction

SARS-CoV-2 Leaves a Lasting Mark on the Immune System

A landmark new study shows COVID-19 isn’t ‘just a cold’: One infection left people with long-lasting immune damage, and those with heart disease lost up to 70% of key immune cells. Reinfections may worsen this. The message is clear: protecting ourselves still matters.

Published December 7, 2025

Published by: John Snow Project
Published on: December 7, 2025

A new study in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases should end any lingering idea that SARS-CoV-2 is ‘just another cold virus.’ It shows that a single, relatively short Omicron wave left a long, measurable scar on the adaptive immune systems of tens of thousands of adults and that people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) may be living with something close to chronic immune compromise nearly two years later.

This isn’t about individual anecdotes, or small clinic cohorts. It’s a population-scale signal, drawn from more than 40,000 patients in a region of China that had almost no SARS-CoV-2 circulation until late 2022. It is, in many ways, the cleanest before and after picture we have of what one mass SARS-CoV-2 exposure does to human immunity.

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measles

Alberta government rejected expert advice to report probable measles cases, documents show

Published December 6, 2025

Published by: The Globe and Mail
Published on: December 6, 2025
By Alanna Smith

The Alberta government rejected expert advice to expand public reporting of measles to include probable cases, despite the measure being supported by local and provincial public health officials, documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show.

Since the outbreak began in Alberta last spring, only confirmed cases of measles have been publicly reported. New data provided through a Freedom of Information request show at least 450 probable cases of measles have also been identified in the province, bringing the total to nearly 2,500.

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pro-virus policies

CDC advisers drop decades-old universal hepatitis B birth dose recommendation, suggest blood testing after 1 dose

Published December 5, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: December 5, 2025
By Mary Van Beusekom, Laine Bergeson, Liz Szabo, Chris Dall

This morning, after contentious discussion, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 8-3 to drop the recommendation for a universal birth hepatitis B vaccine dose and 6-4 to suggest that parents use serologic testing—which detects antibodies in the blood—to determine whether more than one dose of the three-dose series are needed.

Under the first recommendation, only infants born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B would receive a birth dose, while parents of other babies would be advised to postpone the first dose for at least two months.

ACIP makes vaccination recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including those for different age-groups and disease risk status, as well as on US immunization schedules for children, adolescents, and adults. The CDC director has ultimate discretion whether to approve ACIP’s advice, and physicians can make their own decisions about whether to comply, but ACIP recommendations have historically affected insurance coverage of vaccines.

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Month: December 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

The Latest

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Alberta’s government said the province is under no legal obligation to continue publishing the data in a “post-pandemic context.”

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

A large Catalan cohort study shows that healthcare, social care, education, retail, and transport workers are at higher risk for Long-COVID

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

U.S. panel voted to remove universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendations for infants

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Dr. Jordan Feld wants this province to follow international guidance and vaccinate children at birth.

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

The German government has committed half a billion euros to research into long COVID and other post-infection syndromes.

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

A landmark new study shows COVID-19 isn’t ‘just a cold’: One infection left people with long-lasting immune damage, and those with heart disease lost up to 70% of key immune cells. Reinfections may worsen this. The message is clear: protecting ourselves still matters.

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts