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Tag: Alberta

Topic: climate crisisView all posts for the topic: climate crisis

Wildfire smoke could move into Ottawa, eastern Ontario tonight

Published May 13, 2024

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Published by: CTV News
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By William Eltherington

Wildfires 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.”

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Topic: climate crisisView all posts for the topic: climate crisis

Smoky skies back in Alberta as wildfires spread

Published May 12, 2024

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Published by: CBC News
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Just 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.

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Topic: climate crisisView all posts for the topic: climate crisis

Edmonton to see smoky skies, poor air quality into Monday night

Published May 12, 2024

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Published by: CTV News
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By Brittany Ekelund

Edmontonians 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.

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

UCP board urges Premier Danielle Smith to make COVID vaccine policy changes for children

Published May 11, 2024

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Published by: CBC News
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By Jason Markusoff, Joel Dryden

The United Conservative Party’s board is urging Premier Danielle Smith to reform COVID vaccine policy because the directors are worried about the safety of mRNA vaccines for kids, the party president says.

“We have serious concerns about them for children,” Rob Smith, the UCP president, told CBC News in an interview Friday.

“I would say that the board of directors’ position is that if parents are going to get their children vaccinated, they need to be very, very sure that they know what they’re doing.”

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High-risk Albertans urged to get another vaccine dose as COVID-19 cases ticking upElectron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. Photo by: NIAID. Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 DEED Attribution 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.
Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

High-risk Albertans urged to get another vaccine dose as COVID-19 cases ticking up

Published May 7, 2024

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Published by: CBC News
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By Jennifer Lee

After 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.

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Topic: pandemic responseView all posts for the topic: pandemic response

Scientists, clinicians across Canada preparing for future pandemic threats

Published May 6, 2024

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Published by: The Canadian Press
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By Nicole Ireland

Nearly $574 million will be doled out to researchers across the country for projects aimed at ramping up Canada’s preparedness for future health emergencies, including the next pandemic, the federal government announced on Monday.

One of the 19 projects is a national network of existing emergency departments and primary-care clinics, called Prepared, that will screen for any new viruses or pathogens that start to appear in patients.

“As a public health specialist and as a practising physician, I would very much anticipate there being another respiratory pandemic in the future. The challenge is we don’t know when it will be or what it will be,” said Dr. Andrew Pinto, Prepared project lead and a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

Confirmed case of measles in Edmonton, AHS warns of public exposure

Published April 24, 2024

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Published by: Edmonton Journal
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By Cindy Tran

Alberta Health Services is warning the public that an individual with lab-confirmed measles has been in public settings in Edmonton while infectious.

In a Wednesday news release, officials sent out a list of locations and times of when the infected person was out in public and said residents who were at any of the locations during the specified dates and times may have been exposed to measles:

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

Edmonton judges dismiss appeal by parents; Alberta school boards may not enforce their own masking mandates

Published April 24, 2024

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Published by: Edmonton Journal
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By Jackie Carmichael

A panel of Alberta appeals court judges has dismissed an appeal by parents of five immunocompromised Alberta kids.

Lawyers for the families, known only by initials, had argued the children’s Charter rights were violated in 2022 when the province stopped masking requirements and barred school boards from enforcing their own masking mandates.

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Alberta’s Secret Pandemic Study Is Led by COVID Restrictions’ CriticAlberta Premier Danielle Smith on April 10, 2024. Photo by Chris Schwarz / Government of Alberta. Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/.
Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

Alberta’s Secret Pandemic Study Is Led by COVID Restrictions’ Critic

Published April 24, 2024

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Published by: The Tyee
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By David Climenhaga

When 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.

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

‘Contrarian’ doctor a good choice to lead COVID-19 data review, Alberta premier says

Published April 23, 2024

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Published by: CBC News / The Canadian Press
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By Lisa Johnson

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says it’s a good idea to have a physician who accused the province of exaggerating COVID-19’s impact on hospitals now lead a review of pandemic-era health data.

Smith says Dr. Gary Davidson was selected to lead the data review because she wants to hear a range of viewpoints, including from those “shouted down in the public sphere.”

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Topic: climate crisisView all posts for the topic: climate crisis

Alberta scientists band together to shift climate change focus to health impacts

Published March 24, 2024

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Published by: CTV News / The Canadian Press
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By Bob Weber

Bodies and minds are just as affected by climate change as sea ice and forests, says University of Alberta scientist Sherilee Harper.

“Climate change impacts everything we care about,” she said. “It’s not just an environmental issue.”

That’s why Harper, along with 30 or so colleagues from disciplines as wide-ranging as economics and epidemiology, have banded together into what she calls Canada’s first university hub to shift the view of climate change from an environmental problem to a threat to human health.

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Topic: measlesView all posts for the topic: measles

Canada heading toward major measles outbreak without vaccine boost, new modelling suggests

Published March 16, 2024

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Published by: CBC News
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By Lauren Pelley

As measles cases keep appearing in more parts of the country, new projections suggest there’s a high chance Canada may experience a “sizable outbreak” — with anywhere from dozens to thousands of people infected if the disease strikes communities with low vaccination rates.

As of Friday, at least 31 cases of measles have been reported so far this year across Canada, according to a CBC News tally of provincial and regional figures released by public health teams.

That’s already the largest annual total since 2019 and more than double the number of cases reported last year, as medical experts fear the number will rise while more Canadians travel in and out of the country this month for March break.

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Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

Fall COVID-19 vaccine cut illness risk by half overall

Published February 22, 2024

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Published by: Globe and Mail
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By Kelly Grant

The fall COVID-19 vaccine cut the risk of COVID-19 illness by about half overall, and by 67 per cent for those with a previous infection, according to new research from the Canadian network that has long tracked the performance of the annual flu shot.

This is the first time the Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network, which is comprised of hundreds of primary care providers in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, produced mid-season estimates of the effectiveness of immunization against COVID-19.

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

Latest COVID-19 variant wrestles its way to the top in Alberta

Published January 10, 2024

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Published by: CBC News
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By Jennifer Lee

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.

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

Albertans can now book appointments for the updated Novavax vaccine

Published January 3, 2024

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Published by: CBC News
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By Jennifer Lee

A limited supply of the updated Novavax vaccine is rolling out in Alberta this week with appointment booking starting Wednesday and shots going into arms as of Friday.

Alberta Health said it has approximately 5,000 doses of the Novavax XBB.1.5 vaccine in stock.

The latest version of the protein-based vaccine was approved by Health Canada in early December.

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

An Alberta New Year’s Wish for a Working Public Health System

Published December 29, 2023

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Published by: The Tyee
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By Lisa Young

When approving the advertising campaign, the government’s revisions “included the removal of details about vaccine eligibility, immunization locations by age group and the types of vaccines being offered and their efficacy against different strains of COVID-19 and influenza. Two lines that encouraged Albertans to book vaccination appointments were also deleted.”

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Topic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta

Alberta’s COVID death toll up by 36 since last week, with 177 more hospitalizations

Published December 14, 2023

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Published by: CBC News
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By Robson Fletcher

Another 36 Albertans have died from COVID, according to the latest weekly data released by the province on Thursday.

That brings the death toll for the current season to 306.

Continue readingAlberta’s COVID death toll up by 36 since last week, with 177 more hospitalizations
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