Work-related factors may increase the risk of developing long COVID, according to a new population-based study from Spain.
The findings, published in BMJ Occupational & Environmental Medicine, suggest that the primary work-related drivers of increased long COVID risk were irregular or limited use of respirators, close contact with coworkers and/or the public, inability to physical distance, and use of public transportation to commute to work.
Comments closedAlberta’s government quietly eliminated its public reporting dashboard of COVID-19 outbreaks in acute care facilities, saying the province is under no legal obligation to continue publishing the data in a “post-pandemic context.”
Alberta Health Services’ (AHS) acute-care outbreaks webpage provided weekly public reports on COVID-19 outbreaks in AHS and Covenant Health facilities, including the location where an outbreak had been reported, the date the outbreak was declared, the number of units affected, and how many patients and health-care workers were infected.
Comments closedWork-related factors play a significant and independent role in the risk of developing Long-COVID, shows a new study based on the COVICAT cohort and led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Turin and the Germans Trias i Pujol Institute (IGTP). The findings, published in BMJ Occupational & Environmental Medicine, highlight that a substantial share of Long-COVID could be prevented through targeted workplace measures and policies.
The public health impact of Long-COVID is far from over. Beyond ongoing infections that continue to cause illness and deaths worldwide, millions of people are living with lasting health consequences. Globally, around 6 in every 100 COVID-19 cases develop Long-COVID, amounting to 400 million affected people and an annual economic impact of roughly 1 trillion dollars, or 1% of the global economy.
Comments closedThe Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Alberta has launched an online campaign against the province’s $100 fee for Albertans who want to get a COVID-19 vaccination.
A new website calls on the province to “axe the vax tax.”
The website calls the fee unfair, reckless and dangerous, and allows Albertans to write a letter to Premier Danielle Smith, Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi and their local MLAs protesting the province’s decision to charge Albertans $100 for a COVID vaccine this year.
Comments closedEDMONTON – In a partial policy reversal, Alberta’s government said Tuesday it will cover the cost of COVID-19 vaccinations for health-care workers.
Maddison McKee, spokesperson to Primary and Preventative Health Services Minister Adriana LaGrange, said in an email that COVID-19 vaccine coverage will be extended to all health-care workers this fall under the first phase of the province’s vaccination rollout.
“Immunization will remain voluntary,” said McKee.
Comments closedA human rights tribunal has found that an employer’s failure to provide accommodation for an immunocompromised worker amounted to discrimination on the basis of disability.
The April decision by the BC Human Rights Tribunal affirmed that immunodeficiency is a physical disability, and that in raising concerns about his immunodeficiency multiple times, the worker who brought the case forward had given his employer enough information to trigger the employer’s responsibility to look into ways to accommodate that disability.
Gabrielle Peters, a disabled writer and policy analyst based in Vancouver, praised the decision as broadening the discussion of what it means to create an accessible workplace.
Comments closedPublic Service Confidential is a workplace advice column for federal public servants. The following question has been edited for clarity and length.
I am an immunocompromised federal public servant with multiple chronic illnesses. I still work from home, but HR wants me back in the office three days a week the moment they can give me a private office beside the bathroom. My doctor wrote a letter to counter the accommodation, saying it’s not appropriate and even less beside a bathroom with the shared environment, and it could put my life at risk of getting sick with complications. So I am fighting to keep my full-time telework agreement.
Comments closedNearly 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.”
Comments closedThe number of sick days employees working for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat took during the month of September skyrocketed as the department urged public servants to make their way back to their offices at least three days a week.
According to departmental data, TBS employees took a total of 2,191 sick days between Sept. 1 and Sept. 30.
That was up significantly from previous years. During the same period in 2023, employees took 1,708.9 sick days. In 2022, they took 1,477.9 sick days and in 2021 they had 1,075.4 sick days. In 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, TBS employees’ sick days totalled a mere 827.6 days.
Comments closedThe 2024 school year is beginning amid one of the biggest COVID-19 waves of the pandemic.
One U.S doctor states, “This is a very significant surge. The levels are very high. They’re the highest we’ve ever seen during a summer wave.” It might be hard to think about, but we’re still in a pandemic and experts are warning against COVID-19 complacency in schools.
Dying with COVID-19 in the acute phase may have decreased, but complications from an infection exist — more than 2 million Canadians have “long COVID” (LC). In this context, societies that see themselves as equitable, inclusive and just need to consider if they’re doing the best job protecting their more vulnerable members, like children and many precarious workers. Research shows governments are not doing the best protecting the rights of children in a crisis, and reports from workers indicate some feel abandoned and left to deal with scary health situations, largely on their own. For school staff, students, their families and communities, this all seems quite cruel. It does not need to be this way.
Comments closedFlannery Dean is a writer and editor based in Hamilton.
Nearly five years into life with COVID-19, I find myself selfishly wondering how many more times I – by which I mean, all of us – need to get it before we acknowledge that allowing multiple reinfections poses a very large problem? I thought my second bout of it (or was it my third?) in February, 2023, was tough – that one set me back a few months. But this nasty little bug, which is again surging here, there and everywhere, has bitten me once again, and has been a beast to overcome.
My latest infection – which began in June and is mild by medical standards – surprised me. I’m an active, healthy woman in her 40s. In addition to having been infected previously, I’ve gratefully received every single vaccine offered, including the booster shot only about 18 per cent of Canadians got last fall. I’m not sure I blame those who didn’t rush out in droves to get it. There was little public push to do so, and a general sense that infection after vaccination was okay so long as you’re “healthy.” Continued protection against a virus that makes swift and powerful adaptations is a hard sell when you don’t invest in the power of prevention, too.
Even so, after the fever passed, I spent a month largely confined to my bed, unable to do more than shuffle to my doctor’s office and back. I felt weak and nauseated in a way that made pregnancy queasiness seem quaint. My muscles felt tired or tingling or cold, or all three at once. I was regularly overcome by a sensation that I can only describe as a full-body panic attack, marked by a racing heart and rapid breathing. For weeks, I felt like my internal circuitry was on the fritz. Even my vision was blurred.
It remains so.
Comments closedJacob Scheier is an essayist, freelance journalist and Governor-General’s Literary Award-winning poet whose books include Is This Scary?
It might not have been the most favourable, but one of the most memorable comments I ever received on a student evaluation was that I could be “a bit hard to follow, but that was more an example of [my] passion for this subject over anything.” That subject was creative writing. And yes, sometimes, I had difficulty tempering my excitement throughout a teaching career that has now been cut short.
I have – or had – been teaching as a contract or “sessional” creative-writing instructor. Given the competitiveness of the academic job market and my age (I was nearly 40 when I earned the requisite degree, though I had already published four books), I had come to accept that it was unlikely that I would ever have a faculty position. But I could live with that because I still had the rare privilege of making a (barely) livable wage doing something I was very passionate about.
The COVID-19 pandemic took that from me. Actually, that’s not quite right. It was the perceived “end” of the pandemic that really ruined my teaching career.
Comments closedCue Health, the once high-flying San [Diego] biotech supplying rapid COVID-19 test kits to the NBA and others, is shutting down this week.
Cue’s closure comes a week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers to throw out any of its COVID-19 test kits because they could give false results. The San Diego firm said it has stopped selling the COVID-19 tests, which was its only fully FDA-approved commercial product.
Comments closedThe Union of Family Physicians of Ontario (OUFP) is calling for the resignation of Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones after the Ministry of Health suggested recruitment and retention of doctors in Ontario is “not a major concern.”
The group said the comments from the ministry are “insensitive and dangerous” during a period in which family medicine is in crisis.
The ministry made the argument as part of arbitration with the Ontario Medical Association over physician compensation.
Comments closedTORONTO, April 17, 2024 – OPSEU/SEFPO President JP Hornick and members working at Public Health Ontario (PHO) Labs were at Queen’s Park today to sound the alarm about the potential closure of six (6) out of 11 PHO labs in Ontario, and the risk it poses for all Ontarians – especially rural families and communities.
“If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that public health should never be taken for granted,” said Hornick. “Like many choices made by this government, if Premier Ford decides to shutter the doors of these 6 labs it will be short-sighted and dangerous.”
Comments closedA dedicated sick pay scheme for people suffering from the effects of “long Covid” is due to end in two weeks’ time in a move which will affect around 120 healthcare workers.
In July 2022 the Government introduced a temporary scheme to provide special leave with pay for eligible staff suffering with the symptoms of long Covid, such as fatigue and exhaustion. While the scheme was previously extended following approval by the Department of Public Expenditure, it will now end on March 31st. The Department of Public Expenditure has told the Department of Health that no further extensions will be granted.
Comments closed