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 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.
he 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 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 closedVaccine production is nearly three years behind schedule at a federally owned plant in Montreal and the future of a deal between Ottawa and an American company to make COVID-19 vaccines here is now under review.
Comments closed(Montreal) The rehabilitation process is long for patients with long COVID, which can limit professionals in their acceptance of new patients. This issue, added to the other ills of the healthcare system, means that some 4,000 patients end up in the network of long COVID clinics, half of whom are on the waiting list.
Comments closedWhile on the front line at the height of the COVID-19 health crisis, many healthcare workers are struggling to access care after contracting long COVID. Only 12% of healthcare workers who suffer from it have received rehabilitation care, according to a research report by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ).
Comments closedQuebec public health authorities on Monday launched the annual influenza and COVID-19 vaccination campaign, administering the shots first to people in long-term care before making the vaccines available for free to the general population as of Oct. 16.
And for the first time this year, medical staff will be immunizing infants up the age of 18 months against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a seasonal pathogen that often leads to overcrowded pediatric emergency rooms during the winter. Health Canada has approved a monoclonal antibody therapy, Nirsevimab, which is now being injected into premature infants in Quebec before they leave the hospital.
Comments closedAt the height of the pandemic in February of 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he had found a partner to make millions of doses…
Comments closedBritish Columbia says its current supply of COVID-19 vaccines will remain available until new formulations are approved — unlike other provinces that say they’re following a federal directive to destroy existing doses.
A spokesperson for the provincial health officer says B.C. residents are encouraged to wait for the updated COVID vaccines if possible, but people can still get last season’s shots if they need them.
Officials in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan and say they are following instructions from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to dispose of vaccine stocks that target the XBB.1.5 variant, since updated formulations are expected this fall.
Comments closedHealth Canada has directed provinces to withdraw and destroy remaining supplies of last year’s COVID-19 vaccines while it works to authorize updated shots, which is expected to happen in October, according to Ontario’s health ministry.
“Vaccines will be available once Ontario receives supply from Health Canada following their regulatory authorization of the new, updated vaccine formulation,” read a statement from Ontario spokesperson Hannah Jensen.
A notice posted on the federal government’s immunization guide says vaccines aimed at Omicron variant XBB.1.5 is no longer available in Canada. Updated shots, made to target the now-dominant JN.1 or KP.2 strains are expected to get the green light “in the coming weeks.”
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.
Comments closedThe rise in the number of cases of avian influenza on farms in the United States, the infection of cow herds and recent cases of transmission to human beings are of concern to Quebec and Canadian authorities, who say they are monitoring the situation very closely.
Avian influenza – specifically avian influenza of subtypes H5 and H7 – is a reportable disease in Quebec. Avian influenza is a zoonosis, meaning it can be transmitted from animals to humans.
Cases of avian influenza in humans remain very rare, but last spring three cases of human infection associated with infected dairy farms were reported in the United States. Two infected people had eye symptoms and the third person suffered a respiratory infection.
Comments closedSmoke from wildfires in Western Canada will soon be drifting high overhead, but it poses no health risk in Eastern Ontario, says Environment Canada.
“Taking a look at our guidance and the weather patterns this week and the way things are panning out, it doesn’t look like Eastern Ontario needs to be concerned about its air quality at this time,” Trudy Kidd, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said Monday.
“At best, people might see some haze in the skies in the coming days as the forest fire smoke makes its way through and disperses aloft, but from what we can tell at this time, the particulate matter — and that’s what’s of concern when it comes to forest fires — we’re expecting it to stay aloft,” she said.
Comments closedWildfires in western Canada will likely bring smoke into Ottawa and eastern Ontario starting on Monday and into Tuesday morning.
CTV’s Your Morning chief meteorologist Kelsey McEwen says smoke could travel as far as Quebec City by Tuesday morning with air quality advisories being issued in five provinces.
“You can see the Jetstream pulling that smoke down south of the border through the Dakotas and back up through the Great Lakes,” McEwen said.
“By tomorrow, this begins to slide toward the Ottawa-Gatineau area, tomorrow morning and out toward Quebec City.”
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