DoNoHarm BC and Protect Our Province BC warn of patient harm, staff shortages, and rising international risks February 12, 2026 (British Columbia, Canada) – Independent public…
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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Snapshots of the unseen: How we focused Long COVID in a recent photo exhibition
“Are you sick?” the Uber driver asked. “Is that why you’re wearing a mask?”
I launched into my usual monologue, delivered to strangers weekly at this point, explaining how COVID-19 transmission is still high and that I don’t want to be reinfected to worsen my existing Long COVID.
He looked at me, puzzled, through the rearview mirror. “I haven’t heard of that before,” he said, “but you look really good!”
I awkwardly stammered that I can no longer exercise, and a few years ago I could barely leave the house, almost dropping out of my graduate school program. I listed statistics of Long COVID prevalence and the compounding risks of infections.
Comments closedTopic: wastewater monitoringView all posts for the topic: wastewater monitoring
The Secret Weapon in Canada’s Sewers
As America takes an axe to its health data, expanding wastewater surveillance could save lives
As a virologist, I spend my days thinking about how to detect outbreaks of coronaviruses, mpox, West Nile and other pathogens early enough to stop them. Right now, I’m concerned about Canada’s awful flu season and the fact that we recently lost our measles-elimination status. But mostly, I’m terrified of what’s unfolding south of the border.
The consequences of the Trump administration’s cuts to the CDC and NIH will extend far beyond America. Those agencies form the backbone of North America’s infectious-disease surveillance. They track variants, monitor cross-border spread and feed data into global systems coordinated by the World Health Organization, helping everyone on Earth prepare. When those programs are dismantled, Canada loses key warning signs of influenza, RSV, measles and whatever diseases are coming next.
Comments closedTopic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
This year’s Pfizer COVID vaccine estimated to be 57% effective against emergency, urgent care
The 2025-26 Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is about 57% effective against emergency department/urgent care (ED/UC) visits and 54% effective against outpatient visits among adults roughly 4 weeks after vaccination, with considerable uncertainty, according to preliminary estimates published on the preprint server medRxiv.
A team that included researchers from the Providence Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System and Pfizer used a test-negative case-control design to estimate the early vaccine effectiveness (VE) of Pfizer’s BNT162b2 LP.8.1 vaccine against ED/UC and outpatient visits.
Participants were VA patients who had an acute respiratory infection (ARI) and underwent COVID-19 testing from September 10 to November 30, 2025.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Post-COVID Brain Fog Linked to Elevated pTau-181
NEW evidence from a prospective cohort study suggests that elevated plasma phosphorylated tau (pTau-181) may be a critical biomarker in patients experiencing neurological post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (N-PASC), particularly among essential workers.
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Experts Call For N95s To Replace Surgical Masks As Flu, Covid Viruses Spread
Nationally, we are seeing very high levels of influenza and, again, a growing wave of COVID-19 infections. A new variant of influenza A H3N2 called subclade K is driving some of this epidemic. Subclade K has already appeared in Japan and Europe and is more severe, especially in the elderly and very young.
Last week, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported 39,945 hospital admissions, up from 33,301 admissions the week before. While numbers have varied some week to week, they have been relatively high. There have been 19 pediatric deaths so far this season. The CDC estimates that there have been at least 15,000,000 illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations, and 7,400 deaths from flu so far this season.
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C.D.C. Brings Back Hundreds of Suspended Workplace Safety Employees
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. placed about 90 percent of the roughly 1,000 employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health on administrative leave last April.
The Trump administration reinstated on Tuesday hundreds of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who had been placed on administrative leave in April.
The employees are all staff members of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a C.D.C. unit charged with preventing work-related injuries.
“This moment belongs to every single person who refused to stay silent,” said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH and the vice president of an American Federation of Government Employees union local that represents C.D.C. employees.
Comments closedTopic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
RFK Jr. appoints 2 vocal opponents of vaccine use in pregnancy to federal advisory board
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today appointed two obstetricians-gynecologists to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Both appointees have a history of questioning vaccine safety in pregnancy, and one has erroneously claimed COVID-19 vaccines caused miscarriages.
Adam Urato, MD, of UMass Memorial Health, is the first listed appointee to ACIP. In October of 2024, he wrote on X, “CDC & ACOG recommend 4 vaccines in pregnancy: Flu, Tdap, RSV, & COVID. My patients often ask: ‘How do we know that all these vaccines won’t have adverse effects on my baby & me?’ The answer is: ‘We don’t.’ Women’s vax concerns should be acknowledged & their choices supported.”
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Increased levels of Alzheimer’s-linked protein found in some with long COVID
A study of 227 individuals who experienced neurocognitive difficulties post COVID-19 infection—such as headaches, vertigo, balance dysregulation, changes in taste/smell, and brain fog—displayed a significant increase in their blood plasma of a crucial protein called tau, which is found in nerves and especially in the brain. Excess levels of tau are linked to neurodegenerative diseases and found in many Alzheimer’s patients.
Published in eBioMedicine, the study suggests that people who experience long COVID neurocognitive symptoms could be at further risk for neurodegenerative diseases.
Comments closedTopic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
Moderna COVID vaccine 53% effective against adult hospitalization in 2024-25 season, data suggest
A large observational study using US healthcare claims and electronic health record data suggests that Moderna’s updated 2024-25 COVID vaccine was 39% effective at preventing medically attended illness among adults and 53% effective against hospitalization, particularly those at high risk for severe disease.
The study, led by scientists from the vaccine manufacturer and published late last week in Infectious Diseases and Therapy, analyzed outcomes among 596,248 adults who received the updated mRNA-1273 vaccine, which targeted the Omicron KP.2 variant, from August 2024 to April 2025. Vaccinated people were matched 1:1 with unvaccinated counterparts.
Comments closedTopic: Northwest TerritoriesView all posts for the topic: Northwest Territories
Yellowknife adds more flu and Covid shot walk-in clinics
Yellowknife public health workers say two walk-in clinics for flu and Covid-19 shots will take place this week.
The first runs from 9am-4pm on Monday including the lunch hour, staff said in a Monday morning email, and the second operates to the same times on Friday, January 16.
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‘Incomprehensibly stupid:’ How U.S. cuts in vaccine recommendations will impact Canadians
Canadian doctors are warning that a new U.S. policy which slashes the number of vaccines universally recommended to all children could have devastating, and potentially deadly effects in Canada, including increasing disease spread through American travellers visiting north of the border.
“This was just incomprehensibly stupid. I was horrified,” said family doctor and former president of the Ontario Medical Association, Dr. Sohail Gandhi in an interview with CTV News Saturday. “Children in the U.S. are going to die as a result of this move – and, worse, some children are going to have lifelong complications as a result of this move.”
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German health minister rejects US counterpart’s COVID claims
US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has claimed that doctors in Germany who issued COVID-19 vaccine exemptions are facing legal action. Health Minister Nina Warken has hit back vehemently at the accusations.
German Health Minister Nina Warken has rejected accusations by US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr that doctors in Germany have faced legal action for issuing vaccine and mask exemptions during the coronavirus pandemic.
Kennedy, a known vaccine skeptic, posted a video on X on Saturday in which he says: “I’ve learned that more than a thousand German physicians, and thousands of their patients, now face prosecution and punishment for issuing exemptions from wearing masks or getting COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.”
Comments closedTopic: universal maskingView all posts for the topic: universal masking
Face masks ‘inadequate’ and should be swapped for respirators, WHO is advised
Experts are urging guideline changes on what health professionals should wear to protect against flu-like illnesses including Covid
Surgical face masks provide inadequate protection against flu-like illnesses including Covid, and should be replaced by respirator-level masks – worn every time doctors and nurses are face to face with a patient, according to a group of experts urging changes to World Health Organization guidelines.
There is “no rational justification remaining for prioritising or using” the surgical masks that are ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics globally, given their “inadequate protection against airborne pathogens”, they said in a letter to WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“There is even less justification for allowing healthcare workers to wear no face covering at all,” they said.
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In utero COVID exposure linked to brain changes, developmental delays, anxiety, and depression
In utero SARS-CoV-2 exposure may predispose children to altered brain volumes, impaired cognition, and internalizing emotional problems such as anxiety and depression, researchers from Children’s National Hospital and George Washington University write in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
The team enrolled 39 mother-baby pairs in Washington, DC, who had been exposed to COVID-19 during pregnancy from 2020 to 2022 and compared them with 103 normative pairs from before the pandemic (2016 to 2019). None of the infected women had been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2.
Comments closedTopic: six yearsView all posts for the topic: six years
COVID-19 Is Six Today. What We’ve Learned
We need cleaner air, which requires changes in medical culture.
Last year on this date, I published a Tyee article about the fifth anniversary of the first public announcement of what we now know as COVID-19.
My conclusions then were that we hadn’t learned much from the experience. A year later, many of us have unlearned the value of vaccination. Outbreaks of measles and whooping cough have predictably followed. Alberta has stopped reporting COVID-19 in hospitals.
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