Still COVIDing Canada

Published by: The Canadian Press
Published on: August 8, 2025
By Nicole Ireland

TORONTO – Canadian doctors and scientists say Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s defunding of mRNA vaccine research and development projects will have negative health effects in Canada and around the world.

“I think that Canadians do need to understand that this and a lot of the changes that Kennedy is making to vaccination policy in particular are definitely going to affect Canadians,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization.

Unlike other vaccines, mRNA vaccines can be made very quickly. They can also be easily modified to fight new viruses and adapt to changing strains — something that we saw as new variants emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rasmussen said.

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pro-virus policies

HHS scraps further work on life-saving mRNA vaccine platform

Published August 6, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: August 6, 2025
By Mary Van Beusekom

In what experts say will hobble pandemic preparedness, US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. yesterday announced the dismantling of the country’s mRNA vaccine-development programs—the same innovation that allowed rapid scale-up of COVID-19 vaccines during the public health emergency.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine-development contracts totaling just under $500 million, including an award to Moderna/University of Texas Medical Branch for a vaccine against the H5N1 avian flu now sweeping the world. That grant was terminated in late May.

Contracts awarded to Emory University and Tiba Biotech were cancelled, and agreements with Luminary Labs, ModeX, and Seqirus have been scaled back.

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measles

Canada likely to lose measles elimination status as outbreak continues: expert

Published August 6, 2025

Published by: CTV News
Published on: August 6, 2025
By Pauline Chan

Canada is at risk of losing its measles elimination status as an outbreak that started in New Brunswick last year continues to grow.

Measles has been considered eliminated in Canada since 1998, and the country saw an average of 91 cases annually before October 2024, when the outbreak began. The designation means that, within a certain geographical region, there has been no sustained measles transmission over 12 consecutive months.

Since then, of the 4,394 measles infections nationwide, Health Canada data shows that most individuals were exposed to the virus domestically (94 per cent) and were not vaccinated (88 per cent).

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wildfires

What’s all this wildfire smoke doing to your health? Here’s what experts have to say

Published August 6, 2025

Published by: CBC News
Published on: August 6, 2025
By Heather Kitching

People who breathe air polluted with large amounts of wildfire smoke visit hospital emergency rooms more often for respiratory symptoms, according to a Canadian emergency room physician and chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

Rates of heart attack and cardiac arrest also increase after a couple of days of exposure, Dr. Courtney Howard said.

“So don’t just attribute that feeling of heaviness in your chest to asthma,” said Howard, who works in Yellowknife and is president of the Northwest Territories Medical Association.

“If you have other risk factors for cardiovascular disease especially, go see your friendly local emergency department.”

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pro-virus policies

RFK Jr. pulls $500 million in funding for vaccine development

Published August 6, 2025

Published by: The Associated Press
Published on: August 6, 2025
By Amanda Seitz

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Health and Human Services will cancel contracts and pull funding for some vaccines that are being developed to fight respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and the flu.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a statement Tuesday that 22 projects, totaling $500 million, to develop vaccines using mRNA technology will be halted.

Kennedy’s decision to terminate the projects is the latest in a string of decisions that have put the longtime vaccine critic’s doubts about shots into full effect at the nation’s health department. Kennedy has pulled back recommendations around the COVID-19 shots, fired the panel that makes vaccine recommendations, and refused to offer a vigorous endorsement of vaccinations as a measles outbreak worsened.

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Alberta

Alberta’s Perverse New Barriers to COVID Vaccines

Published August 5, 2025

Published by: The Tyee
Published on: August 5, 2025
By Andrew Nikiforuk

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s radical new rules for COVID immunization pose a genuine threat to the elderly, the working poor and pregnant moms.

Smith, who revived her ailing political career by peddling conspiratorial COVID theories, has designed a program that is not only punitive but discriminatory, bureaucratic and Soviet in nature.

“This policy is so bad that it’s actually worse than their usual failure to plan properly,” said James Talbot, the province’s former chief medical officer of health. “In fact, it is so bad it looks like they are actually planning to fail.”

Here are the three basic tenets of any successful public health program: make it available, make it accessible and make it affordable. Smith turns all three upside down.

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avian flu

Bird Flu May Be Airborne on Dairy Farms, Scientists Report

Published August 4, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: August 4, 2025
By Apoorva Mandavilli, Emily Anthes

The bird flu virus that has beset dairy farms since early last year may be spreading through the air in so-called milking parlors and through contaminated wastewater, as well as from milking equipment, scientists have found.

The Department of Agriculture has said that the virus spreads primarily from milking equipment or is carried by dairy workers and vehicles traveling between farms.

But in the new study, scientists found live virus in the air of milking facilities, suggesting that cows and farmworkers might have become infected by inhaling the pathogen. The virus may also spread by water used to clean cattle barns or contaminated with discarded milk.

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Ottawa-Gatineau

Wildfire smoke blanketing Ottawa could linger into Tuesday

Published August 4, 2025

Published by: CTV News
Published on: August 4, 2025
By Ted Raymond

Environment Canada says a cloud of wildfire smoke that is covering the nation’s capital could hang overhead into Tuesday.

A special air quality statement is in effect for much of the region as smoke continues to affect most of southern and eastern Ontario.

“The wildfire smoke may persist into tonight and possibly Tuesday before finally easing,” Environment Canada says. “Air quality and visibility due to wildfire smoke can fluctuate over short distances and can vary considerably from hour to hour.”

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Toronto

First human case of West Nile virus acquired in Canada this year confirmed

Published July 31, 2025

Published by: The Canadian Press
Published on: July 31, 2025
By Nicole Ireland

TORONTO – The Public Health Agency of Canada says this year’s first human case of West Nile virus acquired within the country has been confirmed in Toronto.

The confirmation comes after Toronto Public Health said its first laboratory-confirmed case of the virus in 2025 is an adult resident of the city with no travel history.

The virus is transmitted to humans through infected mosquitoes.

PHAC’s West Nile surveillance report says that as of July 12, two other Canadian residents were infected this year while travelling outside of the country.

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vaccines

Analysis: 2024-25 COVID vaccines offered strong protection against worst outcomes in seniors

Published July 31, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: July 31, 2025
By Stephanie Soucheray

The 2024-25 COVID mRNA vaccines targeting JN.1 were highly effective in protecting against hospitalization and death for at least 4 months in a cohort of Danish citizens aged 65 and older by October 1, 2024. The new analysis estimating the vaccine efficacy (VE) of last season’s COVID vaccines was published earlier this week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

In total, 894,560 Danish residents were included in the study, with a median age of 76. By Jan 31, 2025, 820,229 (91.7%) of the participants had received a JN.1 vaccine. Among those without updated JN.1 vaccination (74,331), 278 COVID-19 hospitalizations and 84 deaths were observed during 25.6 million person-days.

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long COVID

Biological causes of long COVID discovered: the virus persists for months in the brain

Published July 31, 2025

Published by: Sciences et Avenir
Published on: July 31, 2025
By Camille Gaubert

Long COVID, often attributed to a psychosomatic mechanism, has biological causes, a study reveals. Months after the infection, the virus was still active, at low levels, in the brainstem of hamsters.

“We hope to bring relief to the patients who may have heard that they are not sick, that it is ‘in their heads.’ What we are showing in the laboratory is that long COVID has a biological cause!,” says Guilherme Dias de Melo, a veterinarian and researcher in infectious diseases and neuropathologies at the Institut Pasteur. Eighty days after the initial infection, the COVID-19 virus was found, still infectious, in the brainstems of hamsters affected by symptoms similar to those of long COVID, according to the work that he has directed and published in the journal Nature Communications.

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cancer

COVID infection early in pandemic linked to higher risk of cancer death, CU study finds

Published July 30, 2025

Published by: The Denver Post
Published on: July 30, 2025
By Meg Wingerter

Cancer survivors infected with COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic had a higher risk of dying from dormant cells reawakening, Colorado researchers found, though they don’t know whether people who get the virus now face the same risk.

Experiments in mice found that genetically modified animals were more likely to have signs of metastatic cancer in their lungs if infected with flu or COVID-19 than engineered mice that researchers didn’t give a virus, said James DeGregori, deputy director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center in Aurora.

That finding launched an international partnership to determine whether the same thing happened in people, he said.

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cancer

‘Sleeping’ cancer cells in the lungs can be roused by COVID and flu

Published July 30, 2025

Published by: Nature
Published on: July 30, 2025
By Max Kozlov

Hidden in the lungs of some breast cancer survivors are tumour cells that can remain dormant for decades — until they one day trigger a relapse. Now, experiments in mice show that these rogue cells can be roused from their slumber by common respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19 or the flu.

The findings, published in Nature on 30 July¹, seem to extend to humans too: data from thousands of people show that infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is linked with a nearly twofold increase in cancer-related death, possibly helping to explain why cancer death rates increased early during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Trump regime

Controversial FDA official Dr. Vinay Prasad departs agency

Published July 29, 2025

Published by: CNN
Published on: July 29, 2025
By Meg Tirrell, Sarah Owermohle, Adam Cancryn

Dr. Vinay Prasad, the controversial critic of the US Food and Drug Administration who took a top role at the regulatory agency in May, has resigned less than three months into the job.

“Dr. Prasad did not want to be a distraction to the great work of the FDA in the Trump administration and has decided to return to California and spend more time with his family,” a spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services told CNN on Tuesday.

Prasad, a hematologist oncologist, was named head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in early May, giving him purview over vaccines and biologic medicines. He was subsequently also given the role of FDA chief medical and scientific officer. Like a number of Trump administration health appointees, Prasad had been a harsh critic of the government’s response and vaccine policies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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long COVID

B.C. plans to cut payments for long-COVID clinics, leaving patients in lurch

Published July 27, 2025

Published by: Victoria Times Colonist
Published on: July 27, 2025
By Alec Lazenby, Vancouver Sun

A virtual clinic that treats patients for long COVID and other chronic conditions is warning that it may have to partially shut down if the province goes ahead with changes on Sept. 1 that would limit the number of patients who can take part in online group appointments.

The B.C. Centre for Long COVID, ME/CFS & Fibromyalgia, run by internal medicine doctors Ric Arseneau and R. Jane McKay, treats 5,000 patients for a variety of chronic diseases, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, which causes extreme fatigue, and PoTS, a heart rate condition.

After each patient goes through an initial one-on-one consultation, follow-up appointments can take the form of a virtual group medical visit of up to 12 patients, where either Arseneau or McKay take at least one to two questions per patient, or a group medication visit of up to 50 patients, which allows for presentations on different medications and then takes questions from patients.

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Quebec

Wildfires: Montreal has the worst air quality in the world

Published July 26, 2025

Published by: Radio-Canada
Published on: July 26, 2025
By Patrick MacIntyre

Smoke from forest fires is responsible for poor air quality in southern Quebec, northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Montreal is also on Saturday the city where air quality is the worst in the world, according to IQAir’s ranking.

With a score of 191, Montreal ranks first, ahead of cities like Kinshasa in Congo and Manama in Bahrain. Toronto is also part of the top 10, it ranks 8th with a score of 110.

A score between 101 and 150 on the IQAir index indicates that conditions are poor for vulnerable people. If the index is higher than 150, the conditions are bad for everyone’s health.

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labour rights

Human Rights Tribunal Affirms Immunocompromised Worker’s Right to Seek Workplace Accommodations

Published July 22, 2025

Published by: PressProgress
Published on: July 22, 2025
By Emma Arkell

A human rights tribunal has found that an employer’s failure to provide accommodation for an immunocompromised worker amounted to discrimination on the basis of disability.

The April decision by the BC Human Rights Tribunal affirmed that immunodeficiency is a physical disability, and that in raising concerns about his immunodeficiency multiple times, the worker who brought the case forward had given his employer enough information to trigger the employer’s responsibility to look into ways to accommodate that disability.

Gabrielle Peters, a disabled writer and policy analyst based in Vancouver, praised the decision as broadening the discussion of what it means to create an accessible workplace.

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Manitoba

Wildfire smoke leads to air quality warnings for much of Manitoba this weekend

Published July 19, 2025

Published by: CBC News
Published on: July 19, 2025
By Santiago Arias Orozco

Smoke billowing from wildfires is leading to poor air quality and reducing visibility throughout most of Manitoba this weekend.

Environment and Climate Change Canada issued warnings Saturday morning for a large swath of the province, including Winnipeg and Brandon in the south, the Interlake and Thompson in the north.

“We have asthma so we try to just like think about how our chest is feeling … and go from there,” Aleecia Doyle said of she and her son, Liam Doyle. The pair ventured to Old Market Square to catch some of the entertainment for Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival opening weekend.

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