Confusion 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 closedCalifornia-based engineer and scientist Patrick Vaughan made a troubling discovery July 10. Dozens of facilities providing COVID-19 wastewater data went offline, seemingly overnight.
Vaughan had been following WastewaterSCAN, a national program that monitors wastewater for diseases. He noticed that 42 of the previously reporting 194 facilities suddenly displayed small blue triangles with the message “data is no longer collected from this site.” The development came just as people across the U.S. scrambled for information during a summer COVID wave that even infected President Joe Biden.
“This is a major blow to our COVID wastewater tracking abilities,” Vaughan told his followers in a video he posted the same day.
Comments closedThe Nassau County Legislature passed the Mask Transparency Act Monday – a law that prohibits the wearing of masks in public in some scenarios.
Those over the age of 16 will not be allowed to wear masks, unless it is being worn for the person’s health, religion or celebratory purposes. Officials say police will be the ones to determine whether or not the masks are being used for those purposes.
Legislators explained their reasoning for supporting the measure during the hearing.
Comments closedBritish Columbia’s top doctor has ended the COVID-19 public health emergency, which began nearly 1,600 days ago on March 17, 2020.
Declaring COVID-19 a public health emergency gave provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry the ability to issue mask mandates, travel and gathering restrictions and vaccination requirements for health-care workers to curb the spread of the virus.
While experts The Tyee spoke with agree the public health emergency may no longer be needed, they stressed that COVID-19 still poses a serious and potentially deadly threat to the general public.
“COVID is still a major, ongoing health issue and crisis,” said Tara Moriarty, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, an infectious disease expert and co-founder of the COVID-19 Resources Canada database.
Comments closedComments closedFor far too long, millions of Americans suffering from long Covid have had their symptoms dismissed or ignored — by the medical community, by the media, and by Congress. That is unacceptable and has got to change.
The legislation that we have introduced finally recognizes that long Covid is a public health emergency and provides an historic investment into research, development, and education needed to counter the effects of this terrible disease. Congress must act now to ensure treatments are developed and made available for Americans struggling with long Covid. Yes. It is time for a long Covid moonshot.
COVID-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 closedFor the past three years, Alexandra Johnston has started her work day by reaching for the pickaxe in the trunk of her car.
It is her tool of choice for prying open manhole covers – a task she demonstrated with practised ease last week while on a tour of her wastewater sampling regimen in Toronto.
Wearing a surgical mask and gloves, Ms. Johnston dragged the heavy cover aside, then grabbed hold of the fishing line secured underneath. After hauling up a few metres of line, she displayed her catch: a dripping wet tampon she had placed there the day before.
Her teammate, Claire Gibbs, quickly moved in with a prelabelled plastic bag to capture the sewage-laden sample. Using scissors, Ms. Gibbs deftly snipped the line, sealed the bag and stowed it away in the trunk as part of that day’s delivery.
Comments closedAn examination of 23 common wildlife species in Virginia finds evidence of SARS-CoV-infection in 6 and antibodies indicating previous infection in 5.
For the study, published today in Nature Communications, Virginia Tech researchers collected 789 nasal and oral swabs and 126 blood samples from animals live-trapped and released or being treated at wildlife rehabilitation centers in Virginia and Washington, DC, from May 2022 to September 2023.
Comments closedOttawa’s wastewater surveillance program will continue after the Ontario government ends funding on July 31, a memo from Board of Health Chair Catherine Kitts says.
In a memo sent to Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and council members Wednesday, Kitts said the surveillance initiative, operated and managed under Robert Delatolla’s team at the University of Ottawa, will remain as it is while discussions about longer-term solutions continue.
The province announced earlier this year that it would stop funding for the highly regarded program as of the end of July — at a savings of around $15 million.
Comments closedWith just days to go until the Ontario government stops funding wastewater surveillance, researchers and residents who use the data fear crucial information about COVID risk is about to go dark, just as a new wave is spreading across Ontario.
Earlier this year, the Ontario government confirmed that it would stop funding the province’s widely respected wastewater surveillance program after July 31. At the time, a spokesperson said the government was ending the program, believed to cost in the range of $15 million a year, because the federal government was expanding its wastewater surveillance program and it didn’t want to duplicate the efforts.
The federal government currently operates four testing sites in Ontario — all in the GTA. It has said it wants to expand its program in Ontario to eight to nine potential sites. The Ontario program gathers surveillance at more than 50 sites.
With the end of provincial funding fast approaching — and a summer COVID-19 wave now beginning to surge in the province — there are growing fears that people who rely on the data on COVID-19 and other diseases will be left in the dark.
Comments closedIt was a familiar scene, but one that is becoming less common in Ottawa and across the country.
On a recent Friday, people arriving for an outdoor concert and dance at Saw Gallery in downtown Ottawa were greeted with signs telling them that masks were mandatory. The same signs thanked them for supporting their community.
Participants happily complied. Some said they have continued to mask and seek out COVID-safe spaces since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Others said they don’t always wear masks in public, but do so when there is a higher risk or they are protecting those who are more vulnerable.
Comments closedSince 2020, the condition known as long COVID-19 has become a widespread disability affecting the health and quality of life of millions of people across the globe and costing economies billions of dollars in reduced productivity of employees and an overall drop in the work force.
The intense scientific effort that long COVID sparked has resulted in more than 24,000 scientific publications, making it the most researched health condition in any four years of recorded human history.
Long COVID is a term that describes the constellation of long-term health effects caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These range from persistent respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, to debilitating fatigue or brain fog that limits people’s ability to work, and conditions such as heart failure and diabetes, which are known to last a lifetime.
Comments closedMark Servos is going back to studying fish.
After more than four years of testing wastewater for traces of COVID-19, the University of Waterloo fisheries biologist and his team that spans 12 universities will take their last samples next week as the country’s largest wastewater network officially disbands.
The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks has terminated the program as of July 31, removing one of the last reliable trackers of the virus’s spread in communities across Ontario.
Comments closedComments closedAnother blow to understanding the spread of COVID-19 is now slated to happen on July 31. That’s when funding ends for Ontario’s extensive wastewater surveillance program. It’s a technology that can detect viral particles up to seven days before people develop symptoms. It costs $15 million annually to check 58 sites throughout Ontario. But the cost of losing this hard-won technology is far greater. No longer having its data means that hospitals, long-term-care facilities, schools and communities will lose critical advanced warning of a potential outbreak. That gives them less time to prepare with masks, air filtration and vaccines.
Long Covid — the name adopted for cases of prolonged symptoms after an acute bout of Covid-19 — is an umbrella diagnosis covering a broad range of clinical presentations and abnormal biological processes. Researchers haven’t yet identified a single or defining cause for some of the most debilitating symptoms associated with long Covid, which parallel those routinely seen in other post-acute infection syndromes. These include overwhelming fatigue, post-exertional malaise, cognitive deficits (often referred to as brain fog), and extreme dizziness.
Given the current gaps in knowledge, some neurologists, psychiatrists, and other clinicians in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere have suggested that an existing diagnosis known as functional neurological disorder (FND) could offer the best explanation for many cases of this devastating illness.
We strongly disagree. Although prominent news outlets such as The New Republic and Slate have promoted this perspective, it is unwarranted to view long Covid through the lens of functional neurological disorder. Despite assertions of robust evidence from those most invested in promoting it, the FND construct is based largely on speculation and assumption. Successful treatments for long Covid are much more likely to emerge from investigations into the kinds of immunological, neurological, hormonal, and vascular differences that have already been documented than from the inappropriate imposition of an often ill-fitting diagnosis onto the broad swath of people with these prolonged symptoms.
Comments closedThe Tour de France has reinstated COVID-19 protective measures, requiring race organizers, media, and guests to wear masks when in contact with riders and team staff. This protocol was announced by race organizer ASO on Sunday morning after several recent COVID-19 cases among the peloton.
“In order to limit health risks, it is now compulsory to wear a mask in the various areas where you will be in contact with the riders and members of the cycling teams,” read the statement from the ASO.
Riders who have abandoned the race due to the virus include Tom Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers), Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates), and Michael Mørkøv (Astana-Qazaqstan). Geraint Thomas (INEOS Grenadiers) remains in the Tour despite testing positive, as the rules currently allow.
Comments closedThere is a COVID-19 outbreak on the 18th floor of the Montreal General Hospital as Quebec and other jurisdictions see a rise in infections.
The hospital has implemented a mandatory mask policy for everyone on that unit and everyone on the floor is being monitored for symptoms.
Overall, the numbers for positive tests for COVID-19 in Quebec are up from 448 in April to 745 yesterday. That’s still far below the 3,000 we had a day in early January.
The 22 deaths reported by the province’s public health institute, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) during the week of June 30 is still far below the 100 a week Quebec was seeing a year ago.
Comments closedNew variants are beginning to affect the number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations, Santé publique notes, but it is not concerned about the situation at this time.
“For the week ending July 5, we had 331 hospitalizations. The week before, it was 291. So it went up by about 14%,” says the national director of public health, Dr. Luc Boileau, in an interview with Le Devoir.
Those affected are mainly seniors, he said, noting that nearly half of the 331 Quebecers hospitalized are 80 years of age or older. “We have new variants, the KP.2 and KP.3, which have gradually settled in Quebec and are taking up all the space,” explains Dr. Boileau.
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