Montreal Public Health says hundreds of people may have been exposed to measles during a recent NATO conference in the city.
The agency says one of the participants in the military alliance’s parliamentary assembly, which took place in Montreal last month, received a measles diagnosis after returning to their home country and would have been contagious while they were in the city.
Comments closedScientists from the Scripps Research Institute are reporting that it would take just a single mutation in the version of bird flu that has swept through U.S. dairy herds to produce a virus adept at latching on to human cells, a much simpler step than previously imagined.
To date, there have been no documented cases of one human passing avian influenza to another, the Scripps scientists wrote in their paper, which was published Thursday in the journal Science. The mutation they identified would allow the virus to attach to our cells by hitching itself to a protein on their surface, known as the receptor.
Comments closedComments closedIt can be surprisingly simple to protect our health and the health of others — by masking in public with high-quality masks (such as KN95 or N95), testing before gatherings, increasing ventilation, and staying home if sick.
Content warning: This article contains depictions of animal suffering and inhumane treatment of animals.
A teen in British Columbia recently became critically ill after becoming infected with H5N1. H5N1 is a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu.
Outbreaks of avian influenza, or bird flu, in livestock and flocks on industrial-scale chicken and dairy farms — so-called factory farms — in the United States are raising alarm bells for public health across the world.
Mainstream commercial animal agriculture is conducted in an intensive way in often cramped and unhygienic environments. These conditions are ideal for new viruses to jump from animals to humans.
Comments closedA Kingston family doctor is being ordered to repay more than $600,000 to the Ontario government for what the province says was reimbursement for improperly billed medical services related to mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
Dr. Elaine Ma has been told by the Health Services Appeal and Review Board to repay $600,962.61, plus interest, to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), to reimburse money she billed the province for vaccinations administered during drive-in COVID-19 vaccination clinics between July 2021 and January 2022.
Comments closedhe president of the Montreal Police Brotherhood, Yves Francoeur, declared Friday on TVA Nouvelles that he is mandating his lawyers to find legal ways to force demonstrators to reveal their faces, describing the situation as unacceptable.
“Yes, citizens have the right to demonstrate, but why would someone need to cover their face, if it is not to do bad things?”, declared Mr. Francoeur. Moreover, his public comments come a week to the day after a demonstration against NATO that degenerated downtown.
Comments closedWhen COVID-19 first struck, Canada had a problem: It lacked domestic capacity to manufacture vaccines. Today, the government of Canada faces the opposite problem: It owns a factory that isn’t manufacturing vaccines.
The Biologics Manufacturing Centre (BMC) in Montreal was completed in 2021 at the cost of $126 million, and fully licensed by Health Canada in 2022. However, a 2021 deal with Novavax to produce their COVID-19 vaccine looks increasingly unlikely to produce a single dose. Indeed, despite annual operating costs around $17 million a year, the BMC has never produced anything.
Comments closedPerth emergency physician Dr. Alan Drummond has never seen anything like it. Drummond has treated five or six patients with pneumonia during almost every shift…
Comments closedA British Columbia teenager who got sick with bird flu two weeks ago did not infect any people or animals they were in contact with while infectious, according to provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.
The B.C. teenager was admitted to BC Children’s Hospital on Nov. 8 and remains in critical condition, although they have made some progress over the last few days and their care team is “hopeful that they will recover,” Henry said at a press conference Tuesday.
Because there have been no new cases and there are no new leads, the public health investigation will be closed for now, Henry said.
Comments closedThe teenager who is infected with the first human case of H5N1 avian influenza acquired in Canada remains in critical care at BC Children’s Hospital, officials said Tuesday.
Speaking at a news conference in Victoria, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said the young person is stable, but still very sick and on a respirator.
Comments closedResearchers involved in the organizations Cochrane Canada and the McMaster GRADE Centre at McMaster University are developing guidelines to prevent and treat Long COVID in Canada. Their effort is supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada and their recommendations would likely have major sway in the way Long COVID is treated if adopted.
Every month, they release new recommendations and provide an opportunity for public comment. On November 20th, the group released a new set of Canadian Post-COVID Condition (CAN-PCC) recommendations which propose harmful and ineffective treatments: Exercise to prevent Long COVID and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat post-exertional malaise (PEM).
Comments closedAs 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 Manitoba government is reporting the first confirmed case of mpox in the province, noting it is also a strain that has not been seen in Canada before.
The province said a confirmed case of clade Ib mpox has been identified in Manitoba and is related to travel in central and eastern Africa.
“The individual was assessed and diagnosed shortly after returning to Manitoba and is currently isolating,” the province said in a news release. “Based on travel history and symptoms, specimens were tested and confirmed by the National Microbiology Laboratory for clade Ib mpox virus.”
Comments closedPat King, one of the most prominent figures of the 2022 “Freedom Convoy” in Ottawa, has been found guilty on five counts including mischief and disobeying a court order.
A judge in an Ottawa courtroom Friday said the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that King was guilty on one count each of mischief, counselling others to commit mischief and counselling others to obstruct police. He was also found guilty of two counts of disobeying a court order.
Comments closedYou would think that the return of a Kennedy scion to the White House would be a moment to celebrate, at least for many of a particular political stripe. But the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the new Trump administration has left many aghast, especially doctors, scientists, and educators.
Despite president John F. Kennedy having famously championed the polio vaccine, his nephew, RFK Jr., is an avowed anti-vaccination zealot, blaming a host of repeatedly unproven ills on such inoculations.
Comments closedContent warning: brief mentions of genocide.
We’re still in a pandemic nearly five years after the first outbreak of COVID-19, but some places in the US and Canada are criminalizing the use of face masks in public. North Carolina has passed a law that restricts wearing masks, the governor of New York supports similar restrictions, and university campuses in California have enacted policies limiting masks. Here in Canada, people in Toronto have been arrested for wearing masks while protesting. Each of these restrictions seek to stop people from “concealing their identities.” The bans present multiple problems: the first is that they pose a risk to public health, and particularly the safety of disabled people. Second, they specifically target activists protesting against the genocide of Palestinians. Both of these issues are related to the right to keep our communities safe, which should not be questioned.
Comments closedThe California Department of Public Health (CDPH) today said tests have identified a suspected avian flu infection in a child from Alameda County who had mild upper respiratory symptoms and no known contact with infected animals.
If confirmed, the case would mark the second avian flu infection in a child in North America from a yet undetermined source. Last week, health officials in Canada reported an H5N1 infection in a previously healthy British Columbia teen who is hospitalized in critical condition.
Comments closedThe teenager hospitalized with bird flu in British Columbia, Canada, may have a variation of the virus that has a mutation making it more transmissible among people, early data shows – a warning of what the virus can do that is especially worrisome in countries such as the US where some H5N1 cases are not being detected.
The US “absolutely” is not testing and monitoring bird flu cases enough, which means scientists could miss mutated cases like these, said Richard Webby, a virologist at St Jude children’s research hospital’s department of infectious diseases.
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