A new study that identified 475 patients with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), also known as long COVID, revealed that nearly 85% (403) of these patients had multiple COVID-19 infections over the course of a four-year period (March 2020 to February 2024). Additionally, vaccination independently reduced the risk of long COVID in patients who had received the vaccination prior to contracting the infection.
Comments closedTag: SARS-CoV-2
Topic: ME/CFSView all posts for the topic: ME/CFS
1 in 20 COVID survivors may have condition characterized by extreme fatigue
New results from the National Institutes of Health’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER)-Adult Initiative suggest that 4.5% of COVID-19 survivors have myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), compared with less than 1% of their uninfected counterparts.
ME/CFS, which can be triggered by viral and non-viral infection, causes severe fatigue for at least 6 months and may entail impaired memory, brain fog, dizziness, and muscle or joint pain. Physical or mental activity exacerbates symptoms, which aren’t fully relieved by rest.
RECOVER-Adult is a longitudinal observational study conducted at 83 sites in 33 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC, to research post-COVID conditions such as ME/CFS and long COVID.
Comments closedTopic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta
Alberta government weighs future of COVID-19 vaccination as federal program winds down
No answer on whether COVID shots will continue to be free in Alberta once change takes effect
The future of Alberta’s COVID-19 vaccination program is unclear with federal funding set to end this summer.
Ottawa has been paying for the shots and distributing them across the country since they became available.
But the Public Health Agency of Canada quietly announced, last week, the provinces and territories will take over purchasing their own supply of COVID-19 vaccines.
Comments closedTopic: Hamilton RegionView all posts for the topic: Hamilton Region
Should Hamilton bring back wastewater surveillance?
The feasibility of bringing back wastewater surveillance in Hamilton to detect emerging infectious disease is being examined by city staff.
“One of the benefits of wastewater sampling is that it’s a really cost-effective tool for public health concerns,” said Dr. Robin Lennox, a Hamilton family physician. “It can be tailored to identify specific pathogens of concern based on what a local community actually identifies as their priorities, so it can look at anything from respiratory viruses to sexually transmitted infections.”
Comments closedTopic: anti-vaxxersView all posts for the topic: anti-vaxxers
Public health experts, scientists warn senators on confirming RFK Jr
A new coalition of more than 700 public health professionals, scientists and activists signed an open letter to oppose Senate confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, saying his “fringe” views and inexperience would put the country at serious risk from severe infectious diseases.
The letter from the coalition called “Defend Public Health” said Kennedy’s “unfounded, fringe beliefs could significantly undermine public health practices across the country and around the world.”
Comments closedTopic: immunity theftView all posts for the topic: immunity theft
Analysis: Why are B.C. kids sick all the time? Health experts explain
Comments closedSimply put, COVID-19 infections weaken our immune systems. This makes us more prone to reinfection with SARS-CoV-2, infections with other viruses (e.g. RSV), reactivation of dormant viral infections (e.g. shingles, Herpes-Zoster virus), bacterial infections (Group A strep,TB) and even rare fungal infections. To make matters worse, the infections themselves may also be more severe. Being infected with SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses or bacteria at the same time can also make things worse, in adults as well as children.
Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
Feds issue new COVID vaccine guidance, says provinces now responsible for buying them
TORONTO – Federal funding for COVID-19 vaccines will stop this year and the provinces and territories will be responsible for buying them, as well as determining the timing of the vaccinations, the Public Health Agency of Canada says.
The agency published the information online on Friday, along with the National Advisory Committee on Immunization’s COVID-19 vaccine guidance for 2025 through to the summer of 2026.
Comments closedTopic: British ColumbiaView all posts for the topic: British Columbia
Flu driving spike in respiratory illness in B.C., but COVID-19 numbers low
VANCOUVER – New data shared by British Columbia’s Centre for Disease Control shows the province has one of the worst flu rates in Canada, as a holiday-season spike in respiratory illnesses continues.
But the data also shows the province has one of the lowest COVID-19 test positivity rates in the country, at about half the national rate.
Dr. Jennifer Vines, interim medical director for public health response at the B.C. CDC, says respiratory illness has been “steadily climbing” over the past several weeks, with RSV and influenza “driving the increase right now.”
Comments closedTopic: New BrunswickView all posts for the topic: New Brunswick
COVID isn’t just ‘a bad flu,’ and NBers need to know that: Coon
Green leader cites huge difference in death toll between viruses
Comments closed“(COVID) isn’t just respiratory. We know that it affects other organs – not just the lungs, but the heart, the brain and other (organs). So there needs to be a much greater focus on prevention, and what does that look like based on what’s been learned about the circumstances and risk factors leading up to those deaths?”
“Related to that is there needs to be a greater effort at awareness and outreach to the general population on COVID – that this is not just the flu. And we know that science continues to progress here. It’s now well understood that the more (times) people get COVID, the greater their chance of long COVID.”
Topic: British ColumbiaView all posts for the topic: British Columbia
Mask Rules Are Back in BC Hospitals
Masks are back for British Columbia’s health-care sector.
On Wednesday the province said it had reintroduced masking requirements for all health-care workers, volunteers, contractors, patients and visitors.
The masking requirements kicked off on Monday and will last for the duration of respiratory season, which usually ends once the weather improves in the spring.
Masks will be required “in areas where patients are actively receiving care, except when eating and/or drinking,” the Health Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
Comments closedTopic: British ColumbiaView all posts for the topic: British Columbia
B.C. orders masks for hospitals, care facilities as flu, respiratory illness increase
VICTORIA – Medical masks are again required in British Columbia health-care facilities as provincial authorities say cases of respiratory illness are rising.
A statement from B.C.’s Health Ministry says workers, volunteers and visitors in facilities operated by provincial health authorities must wear masks in areas where patients are receiving care in order to prevent the spread of the flu, RSV and COVID-19.
The requirement spans hospitals, long-term care and assisted living facilities, outpatient clinics and ambulatory care settings, and it’s expected to remain in effect until the risk of illness decreases, likely in the spring.
Comments closedTopic: British ColumbiaView all posts for the topic: British Columbia
Masking required at all B.C. health-care facilities once again
Masks must again be worn in health-care facilities across B.C., according to the province’s Health Ministry.
In an email to CBC News, the Ministry of Health said the requirement came into effect on Jan. 6, and everyone in health-care facilities, including staff, patients, visitors and volunteers, must wear medical masks “in areas where patients are actively seeking care.”
The move is in response to what the ministry says is a rise in influenza and RSV infections in B.C. COVID-19, it said, is “stable but showing early signs of an increase.”
Comments closedTopic: rapid testsView all posts for the topic: rapid tests
Modeling tool estimates COVID-19 testing saved 1.4 million lives
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how crucial testing is for disease preparedness and response, and new research from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and a team of collaborators underscores that principle.
Published in the Jan. 2 edition of The Lancet Public Health, the research included simulation and analysis that suggests public-private partnerships to develop, produce and distribute COVID-19 diagnostic tests saved an estimated 1.4 million lives and prevented about 7 million patient hospitalizations in the United States during the pandemic.
Comments closedTopic: five yearsView all posts for the topic: five years
COVID 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
AWAJI, JAPAN—The COVID-19 pandemic, as best as we can tell, took more than 20 million lives, cost $16 trillion, kept 1.6 billion children out of school, and pushed some 130 million people into poverty. And it’s not over: Figures from October 2024 showed at least 1000 people died from COVID-19 each week, 75% of them in the United States, and that’s relying only on data from the 34 countries that still report deaths to the World Health Organization (WHO). Last month, at a 4-day meeting here on preventing future pandemics, WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove ticked off those figures with exasperation. “The world I live in right now, no one wants to talk about COVID-19,” she told the gathering. “Everyone is acting as though this pandemic didn’t really happen.”
Yet 5 years after a coronavirus dubbed SARS-CoV-2 first surfaced in Wuhan, China, scientists are still intensively trying to make sense of COVID-19. “We would each have to read over 240 papers every single day to actually keep up with all of the [COVID-19] literature that’s come out” in 2024, Cherilyn Sirois, an editor at Cell, noted.
Despite the flood of insights into the behavior of the virus and how to prevent it from causing harm, many at the meeting worried the world has turned a blind eye to the lessons learned from the pandemic. “I feel this massive gravitational pull to go back to what we were doing before,” Van Kerkhove said. “There’s no way we should be going back.”
Comments closedTopic: AlbertaView all posts for the topic: Alberta
Masking Fear
COVID hasn’t forgotten us
Comments closedYes, I’m still wearing a mask. And yes, it takes some courage. Any time I post images of myself in a mask on my Facebook page, the insults and jeers come thick and fast, mocking me for wearing “a face diaper” or for being too stupid to know that COVID is “over.”
I’ve had strangers shout angry abuse at me as I walk through airports. But I think the most exasperating are the jokes and eyerolls from colleagues and family members, who seem to take my mask as a personal affront or insult. These friends and relations bug me—jokingly, but incessantly—to take it off, or tease me for what they perceive as my neurosis. I had one Senate colleague make fun of me for masking—only to tell me, in his next breath, that he was just getting over his fourth case of COVID.
Topic: five yearsView all posts for the topic: five years
COVID-19 Turns Five Today. The Next Pandemic Is Lurking
Five years ago this morning on Dec. 31, 2019, I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and my laptop. I was a member of “Flublogia,” a group of journalists, health scientists and kibitzers like me who had been tracking reports of disease outbreaks for years. I started every morning by checking my friends’ sites and Twitter feeds.
News had been slow lately; an Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was fading out. But this morning, several of my friends had picked up a report from Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection about a “cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei province.”
Comments closedTopic: five yearsView all posts for the topic: five years
Five years of the COVID-19 pandemic: An interview with Dr. Arijit Chakravarty
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Dr. Arijit Chakravarty on the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic and public health five years after the initial outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan, China. The interview was edited for clarity, with many of the scientific terms defined to provide readers insight into the issues at play. Numerous links to papers and studies have also been embedded into the text for those interested in reading further. This interview builds upon prior discussions we held with Dr. Chakravarty in 2022 and 2023.
Comments closedFive 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 closed