The future of Alberta’s COVID-19 vaccination program is unclear with federal funding set to end this summer.
Ottawa has been paying for the shots and distributing them across the country since they became available.
But the Public Health Agency of Canada quietly announced, last week, the provinces and territories will take over purchasing their own supply of COVID-19 vaccines.
Comments closedComments closedYes, I’m still wearing a mask. And yes, it takes some courage. Any time I post images of myself in a mask on my Facebook page, the insults and jeers come thick and fast, mocking me for wearing “a face diaper” or for being too stupid to know that COVID is “over.”
I’ve had strangers shout angry abuse at me as I walk through airports. But I think the most exasperating are the jokes and eyerolls from colleagues and family members, who seem to take my mask as a personal affront or insult. These friends and relations bug me—jokingly, but incessantly—to take it off, or tease me for what they perceive as my neurosis. I had one Senate colleague make fun of me for masking—only to tell me, in his next breath, that he was just getting over his fourth case of COVID.
Comments closedThe reality is that people are dying from COVID in our hospitals, and we really are doing very little to prevent them getting ill and getting infected. And we wouldn’t do the same for any other infectious disease.
As better diagnosis and symptom management emerged for people with long COVID, researchers in Alberta set to work creating a program that could remotely connect urban specialists and rural patients. Between development and clinical implementation, the project was shelved.
With the province closing its clinics dedicated to treating people with long COVID, the story of Alberta’s innovative rural outreach program appears destined to remain incomplete.
Long COVID, or post COVID syndrome, refers to patients who are still experiencing symptoms twelve weeks after the initial infection. According to Health Canada, the condition affects about 1 in 9 adults who have had COVID.
Comments closedThe days of access to free rapid COVID-19 tests are over, unless you stumble across a pharmacy with a few boxes left, and most Albertans wishing to test for the virus now have to pay out of pocket.
The Alberta government has received its full allotment through the free federal government program, which ended earlier this month. Now its entire stockpile has been distributed.
Comments closedThe second Canadian Symposium on Long COVID came to a close in Edmonton on Friday, with an urgent call for the establishment of a national registry for the condition.
The event, organized by Long Covid Web, a network dedicated to research and support for people suffering from post COVID-19 condition, in collaboration with the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, and Alberta Health Services, brought together researchers, clinicians and patients to discuss the challenges associated with the condition.
The speakers’ testimonies highlighted the devastating impact of long COVID on patients’ daily lives.
Comments closedFamily doctors and nurse practitioners have been told they will not be receiving deliveries of flu or COVID-19 vaccines in time for the fall immunization program launch later this month. And it is unclear if they will get any at all.
In addition to AHS public health clinics and pharmacies, community medical clinics can administer publicly funded vaccines, including those that protect against COVID and influenza.
But shipments of vaccines — to these clinics — have stopped, jeopardizing their participation in the fall immunization campaign.
Comments closedUpdated COVID-19 vaccines are starting to roll out to some high-risk Canadians, but others will have to wait a little while longer before these new shots are offered to them.
Last month, Health Canada approved Pfizer and Moderna’s latest COVID-19 vaccines targeting the most recent variants of the virus.
Both shots are approved for everyone aged six months and older.
The new mRNA vaccines from both pharmaceutical companies target the KP.2 subvariant of Omicron that was dominating COVID-19 spread earlier this year.
Comments closedTORONTO – The Public Health Agency of Canada says it is not providing Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine this respiratory virus season, citing low demand.
It says the manufacturer requires a minimum order of its updated protein-based vaccine, called Nuvaxovid, which far exceeds the uptake by Canadians last year.
The agency says a very small portion of the doses ordered in 2023 were used and that its decision reflects efforts to limit vaccine wastage.
It is distributing two mRNA vaccines — made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — that are approved for adults and children six months and older.
Comments closedWith the approval of Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine, doctors are hoping the shots will be available soon and Albertans will opt to roll up their sleeves to get one.
Last week, Health Canada announced it had authorized Moderna’s new formulation, which targets the recent KP.2 subvariant, and that shipments would arrive within days.
A decision on Pfizer’s new formulation is expected in the next few weeks.
Comments closedBritish Columbia says its current supply of COVID-19 vaccines will remain available until new formulations are approved — unlike other provinces that say they’re following a federal directive to destroy existing doses.
A spokesperson for the provincial health officer says B.C. residents are encouraged to wait for the updated COVID vaccines if possible, but people can still get last season’s shots if they need them.
Officials in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan and say they are following instructions from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to dispose of vaccine stocks that target the XBB.1.5 variant, since updated formulations are expected this fall.
Comments closedHealth Canada has directed provinces to withdraw and destroy remaining supplies of last year’s COVID-19 vaccines while it works to authorize updated shots, which is expected to happen in October, according to Ontario’s health ministry.
“Vaccines will be available once Ontario receives supply from Health Canada following their regulatory authorization of the new, updated vaccine formulation,” read a statement from Ontario spokesperson Hannah Jensen.
A notice posted on the federal government’s immunization guide says vaccines aimed at Omicron variant XBB.1.5 is no longer available in Canada. Updated shots, made to target the now-dominant JN.1 or KP.2 strains are expected to get the green light “in the coming weeks.”
Comments closedThose suffering from long-COVID in Alberta are fighting back after the government informed them the Long-COVID Inter-Professional Outpatient Program was ending.
For some, COVID feels like a distant memory, a time when the world seemed to stop as everyone navigated the pandemic. Yet for many, it’s not in the rearview mirror, it’s still an ever-present reality and daily fight.
Jennifer Hare has had long-COVID for three years.
“Literally, my entire life is planned whereas before, I was a normal human being,” said Hare.
Comments closedAlberta Health Services (AHS) is closing down its long-COVID outpatient program that had been operating since 2021.
In a letter to patients dated Aug. 8, AHS says the program has concluded.
“Your health and well-being remain a priority, and we are committed to ensuring you receive support during the transition,” it reads.
“We understand that this change might be challenging for some and thank you for your understanding and co-operation during this transition period.”
Comments closedConfusion and frustration.
Those are the feelings that 56-year-old Calgary grandmother Barbara Pencala was left with after she learned on Wednesday via email that Alberta Health Services (AHS) is concluding its long COVID Inter-Professional Outpatient Program (IPOP).
The temporary initiative was set up in 2021 and was never meant to be permanent, but the news came as a surprise to hundreds of program patients, many of whom took to social media to express their concerns.
Comments closedCOVID-19 is surging in parts of North America and Europe, and even played a role in ending the presidential campaign of 81-year-old Joe Biden, who was infected for the third time last month.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday the Ontario government shut down its early warning system to detect COVID and other emerging diseases.
Doctors, citizens and researchers are calling the decision to kill the province’s wastewater disease surveillance program both wrong-headed and dangerous. Ending the program will make it harder to track and thwart viral outbreaks, they say, and thereby increase the burden on Ontario’s understaffed hospitals, which experienced more than 1,000 emergency room closures last year.
“Pandemics do not end because science has been muzzled,” Dr. Iris Gorfinkel, a well-known Toronto physician and clinical researcher, told the CBC.
In emails to politicians, more than 5,000 citizens have demanded restoration of the program, with little effect.
Comments closedAlbertans can expect a further COVID-19 bump, driven by yet another crop of new variants, experts are cautioning.
COVID cases, hospitalizations and positivity rates have been rising since April.
“Unlike other respiratory illnesses, we’re not really getting a summer reprieve,” said Sarah (Sally) Otto, a COVID-19 modeller and professor in the department of zoology at the University of British Columbia.
“We’re seeing this across Canada and globally, that there’s an uptick in cases. And that’s coming from these new variants [and the] evolution of this virus.”
The KP.2 and KP.3 variants, combined, now account for more than half of Alberta’s sequenced cases.
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