Five years ago on 31 December 2019, WHO’s Country Office in China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, China. In the weeks, months and years that unfolded after that, COVID-19 came to shape our lives and our world.
Comments closedTag: COVID-19
Long COVID is snuffing out some patients’ dreams of having children, sharpening the pain of loss, grief and medical neglect.
When Melanie Broadley and her husband started going out in 2019, like many couples their age they decided to put “starting a family” on the shelf for a few years so they could focus on their careers. A postdoctoral researcher who studies diabetes and psychology, Broadley was 28 and in good health — she had plenty of time, she reasoned. Then, in 2022, she caught SARS-CoV-2 and developed long COVID, blowing up her life as she knew it and, for now at least, her hopes of having a baby.
“I became totally disabled by long COVID,” says Broadley, 34, who lives at her parents’ house in Brisbane. On a good day she struggles with debilitating fatigue that worsens after any kind of physical or mental activity, an autonomic nervous system disorder called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which causes her heart rate to spike when she stands up, cognitive dysfunction that means she can’t read or write for more than 10 minutes at a time, and an immune disorder, called mast cell activation syndrome, that triggers allergic reactions. Even though she’s been doing everything she can to recover, she’s still too unwell to cope with a potential pregnancy.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
UK doctors and nurses with long Covid to sue for compensation
Nearly 300 British doctors, nurses and other health workers with long Covid are suing the health service for compensation, saying they were not given proper protection during the pandemic.
They say their lives have been devastated by a host of severe health complications. Most cannot return to work and many are housebound.
“This is life-changing. People are really suffering financially. Some are living in poverty,” said nurse Rachel Hext, one of the claimants. “We’re suing because this is the only way of providing for our futures.”
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Hospital workers who refused COVID-19 vaccine lose court battle
Comments closedIt strains all credulity to accept that the Premier of Ontario, a number of cabinet ministers and 54 non-governmental defendants somehow conspired to concoct a plan to declare a ‘false pandemic’ all for the predominant purpose of harming the plaintiffs.
Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
Why We Vaccinate
There’s a concerning trend emerging in Canada and the United States when it comes to vaccine hesitancy.
In the United States, a key legal adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the man tapped to be the next U.S. health secretary, is working to get rid of polio and hepatitis B vaccines in America, according to the New York Times. Kennedy himself has vocally opposed vaccines for years.
And here in Canada the overall childhood vaccination rate is declining, said Dr. Jason Wong, chief medical officer at the BC Centre for Disease Control. Wong is the deputy provincial health officer and a clinical associate professor in the University of British Columbia school of population and public health.
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Respiratory illness on the rise as B.C. residents begin busy holiday season
As B.C. begins the busy holiday season of social gatherings, health officials are reporting a steady increase in respiratory illness, including respiratory syncytial virus and walking pneumonia in children.
RSV is up 10.3 per cent over last week, predominantly in children in the Lower Mainland, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control reported in an update Friday.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Study: 6% of US adults have long COVID, and many have reduced quality of life
Two new studies paint a comprehensive picture of current long COVID cases in the United States, and both suggest the condition limits daily activities for a significant proportion of those affected.
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Judge certifies Nova Scotia COVID-19 lawsuit as a class action
⚠️ Content warning: mention of deaths.
A Nova Scotia judge has certified a class action lawsuit against Northwood, a company that was described as at the epicentre of COVID-19 deaths in the province at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
Some 53 people died in the Northwood complex in north-end Halifax.
A lawsuit was launched shortly after the deaths. On Thursday, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Scott Norton certified it as a class action.
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Why doesn’t Doug Ford’s government want you to know if you have this dangerous disease?
Comments closedTransparency is crucial to public health, but far too little effort has gone into informing the public about the long-term health hazards posed by repeated COVID-19 infections. That needs to change. A good place to start is by providing free rapid tests to enable Ontarians to gauge their risk and that of their loved ones. Its messaging would be clear: Results still matter.
Topic: pro-virus policiesView all posts for the topic: pro-virus policies
America’s Public Health Breakdown Is Just Getting Started
The United States has a health-care system that is terrible and getting worse. It also has a health science system that is the best in the world and about to be dismantled.
The impending return of Donald Trump to the White House seems likely to collapse American health science, with consequences as disastrous for the rest of the world as for the approximately 340 million Americans in the U.S. Canada may be able to soften the impact here, but it will not be easy.
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You’ve never heard of the Covid booster with the fewest side effects
The first time I got a Novavax Covid vaccine, it felt almost subversive.
Over the previous few years, every mRNA-based booster I’d gotten — the ones made by Moderna and Pfizer — had felt like a two-day bout of the flu. I’d gamely booked sick days into my calendar and sucked it up through fevers, headaches, and exhaustion, comforting myself with ibuprofen and the knowledge that at least I was keeping my elderly parents safe.
Two and a half years into the pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration approved a Covid vaccine made by biotech company Novavax using older vaccine production technology. Licensed for people 12 and over, it was nearly as effective at Covid prevention as Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines — and, as I noted with great interest, it had fewer side effects. In 2023, I got one.
Comments closedTopic: hydroxychloroquineView all posts for the topic: hydroxychloroquine
Invalidation of a landmark study on COVID-19 published by a French doctor
“Concerns have been raised” relating to respect for “publication ethics” of the journal’s publisher, and “the appropriate conduct of research involving human participants, as well as concerns raised by three of the authors themselves regarding the article’s methodology and conclusions,” stated Elsevier, the publisher of the scientific journal International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, in a lengthy note justifying this rare retraction.
The article, signed by 18 authors, notably Philippe Gautret, then a professor at the Marseille IHU, and Didier Raoult, who directed this institute, intended to demonstrate the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, combined with an antibiotic – azithromycin – against COVID-19.
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COVID-19 linked to more heart complications than flu, RSV
A new study published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders shows that pediatric and young adult COVID-19 patients are more at risk for cardiac complications than flu or RSV patients of the same age.
The study was based on hospitalized US patients from 2020 through 2021 tracked through the National Inpatient Sample. In total 212,655 respiratory virus admissions were recorded, including 85,055 from COVID-19, 103,185 from RSV, and 24,415 from influenza.
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Trump nominees should ‘steer clear’ of undermining polio vaccine, McConnell says
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, says any of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees seeking Senate confirmation should “steer clear” of efforts to discredit the polio vaccine.
“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” McConnell said in a statement Friday. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
The 82-year-old lawmaker’s statement appeared to be directed at Trump’s pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after a report that one of his advisers filed a petition to revoke approval for the polio vaccine in 2022. That vaccine is widely considered to have halted the disease in most parts of the world.
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Over 300 COVID outbreaks hit Alberta acute care facilities last year
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.
Topic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario
Guelph wastewater testing will continue for COVID-19 and more by university researchers
Wastewater in Guelph will continue to be monitored for COVID-19, influenza and other illnesses through a new partnership between researchers at the University of Guelph and Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health.
The researchers will get samples of wastewater three times a week, then will submit their findings to public health, which will in turn publish it to a public online dashboard.
Provincial funding for wastewater testing was cut on July 31 with the Ontario government citing a federal program that tests wastewater; however, none of the testing sites are in Waterloo region or Guelph.
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Topic: British ColumbiaView all posts for the topic: British Columbia
Advocates Urge BC to Reinstate Healthcare Mask Protections Amid Rising Risks
DoNoHarm BC, Protect Our Province BC and the Canadian Covid Society warn of infection risks in healthcare
December 10, 2024 (British Columbia, Canada) – Advocacy groups in BC are calling on policy-makers to immediately reinstate healthcare mask requirements. The call comes as BC faces severe risks from COVID-19, a rise in “walking pneumonia,” local measles warnings, and Canada’s first human case of H5N1 avian influenza – which health officials warn could potentially turn into another pandemic.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
We can, and must, do more to protect students in higher education from the risks of post-COVID condition
Canada’s postsecondary institutions have a responsibility to protect students and others on campus from the risks of post-COVID condition as a matter of campus safety.
Canada’s Chief Science Advisor, Mona Nemer, recently released the report, Dealing with the Fallout: Post-COVID Condition and its Continued Impacts on Individuals and Society.
Post-COVID condition (PCC), also known as “long COVID,” refers to the poorly understood and often serious health damage left by the SARS-CoV-2 virus after the acute illness appears to have passed.
Universities, colleges and schools have a duty to take reasonable precautions to protect students, staff and faculty from foreseeable harms. They must ensure the water on campus is safe to drink. They must install fire and carbon monoxide detectors and make evacuation plans. Many have adopted a smoke-free policy on campus as part of a commitment to an international charter on health promotion in universities and colleges. Yet there is little pandemic health promotion on Canadian campuses.
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