Two New Brunswickers died from COVID-19 and one was killed by influenza between May 5-11, according to new data from the province.
All three were 65 or older.
Eight people required hospital treatment for COVID between May 5-11; none needed intensive care. There were three lab-confirmed COVID outbreaks, including one in a nursing home and two in “other facilities.”
Comments closedComments closedWe know that COVID-19 is not an equal-opportunity disease, we’ve known this for four years. COVID tends to have a disproportionately high impact on people who are lower on the socio-economic ladder; people who don’t have the luxury of working from home, people who are doing essential work, people who because of their income are living in more crowded conditions. These are all risk factors and they’re all socio-economically tied. So to say, ‘Yeah, there’s this tool that will keep you safe if you have enough money to pay for it,’ I think is an abdication of what public health is supposed to be, which is public.
Cue 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 closedComments closedThe issue is not that there is a difference of opinion here. It’s that there is a huge amount of science that shows that these vaccines save lives and they are overwhelmingly safe so to claim otherwise becomes a statement of misinformation.
Singapore is seeing a new Covid-19 wave, with rising cases of infection in the last two weeks, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung on May 18.
“We are at the beginning part of the wave where it is steadily rising,” said Mr Ong. “So I would say the wave should peak in the next two to four weeks, which means between mid- and end of June.”
The Ministry of Health (MOH) said that to protect hospital bed capacity and as a precaution, public hospitals have been asked to reduce their non-urgent elective surgery cases and move suitable patients to facilities like transitional care facilities or back home through Mobile Inpatient Care@Home.
Comments closedCovid-19 levels are about the lowest they’ve ever been in the United States, but another new crop of virus variants once again threatens to disrupt the downward trend as the country heads into summer.
KP.2 — one of the so-called FLiRT variants — has overtaken JN.1 to become the dominant coronavirus variant in the United States, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data through May 11 shows that it’s responsible for more than a quarter of cases in the country, which is nearly twice as many as JN.1. A related variant, KP.1.1, has caused about 7% of cases, CDC data shows.
Comments closedCOVID-19 rapid tests in New Brunswick will stop being distributed through community-based distribution sites when the current supply runs out, which the province says will likely be by the end of next month.
A news release from the New Brunswick government Thursday says, aside from a few specific groups, testing hasn’t been recommended for the general public since March 2023. Separate testing guidelines remain in place for certain settings, such as special care homes.
“However, our guidance has changed throughout the pandemic as the virus has evolved,” said Dr. Yves Léger, the province’s acting chief medical officer of health. “Testing will still be recommended for certain groups but, for the general public, the focus is on staying home when you are ill. That remains the most important measure to take.”
Comments closedRepublican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing forward with their plan to repeal a pandemic-era law that allowed the wearing of masks in public for health reasons, a move spurred in part by demonstrations against the war in Gaza that have included masked protesters camped out on college campuses.
The legislation cleared the Senate on Wednesday in a 30-15 vote along party lines despite several attempts by state Senate Democrats to change the bill. The bill, which would raise penalties for someone who wears a mask while committing a crime, including arrested protesters, could still be altered as it heads back to the House.
Opponents of the bill say it risks the health of those masking for safety reasons. But those backing the legislation say it is a needed response to the demonstrations, including those at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that escalated to police clashes and arrests. The bill also further criminalizes the blockage of roads or emergency vehicles for a protest, which has occurred during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham.
Comments closedComments closedWe did the 2024 Covid-versus-flu rematch thinking that we may find that risk of death in Covid may have sufficiently declined to become equal with the risk of death from flu. But the reality remains that Covid carries a higher risk of death than the flu. […]
Overall, I think this means that we still need to take Covid seriously. Trivializing it as an inconsequential ‘cold,’ as we often hear, doesn’t mesh or align with reality.
The virus that causes COVID-19 can breach the protective blood-retinal barrier, leading to potential long-term consequences in the eye, new research shows.
The blood-retinal barrier is designed to protect our vision from infections by preventing microbial pathogens from reaching the retina where they could trigger an inflammatory response with potential vision loss.
Comments closedIn response to April’s removal of mandatory mask mandates in healthcare settings, BC’s health advocacy group DoNoHarm BC, joined by Protect Our Province BC and Masks4EastVan, are leading a campaign to urge the provincial government to reinstate these protections. The groups say that BC health authorities have ignored warnings about ongoing COVID-19 risks and other respiratory threats like measles and tuberculosis.
The decision to remove mask mandates in healthcare settings was announced by the Ministry of Health, “the peak of the respiratory illness season has passed.” Though COVID-19 levels typically lessen in the spring, COVID-19 has not been established as a seasonal illness.
The Peak reached out to Dr. Karina Zeidler who organizes with DoNoHarm BC and is the co-founder of Protect Our Province BC for more information. Zeidler referenced a research article from BC Medical Journal which noted that “for some of these most vulnerable patients, the air in the hospital can be deadlier than the diagnosis that brought them in.” This is due to hospital acquired infections, which can then lead to COVID-19 deaths.
Comments closedHealth-care workers who pushed back against being forced to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or face losing their jobs have lost in the BC Supreme Court.
In a ruling released Monday, presiding judge Justice Simon R. Coval says the provincial health officer was right in mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for health-care workers.
The three cases in question were brought to court by a nurse practitioner and two doctors, with all three saying they didn’t want to get the shot.
Comments closedThe first study of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in a large population of adult heart-failure patients suggests that vaccinated participants are 82% more likely to live longer than their unvaccinated peers, according to an analysis presented over the weekend at the Heart Failure 2024 scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in Lisbon, Portugal.
Comments closedOne of the most polarizing figures to gain notoriety during what became known as the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa more than two years ago will stand trial Monday, signalling the tail end of criminal proceedings that have dogged hundreds of individuals who participated in the historic protest.
Pat King, from Red Deer, Alta., is facing charges of mischief, intimidation, obstructing police, disobeying a court order and other offences for his role in the protest that gridlocked downtown for nearly a month in early 2022.
Arrested and jailed for five months before his release that summer, King is unlikely to serve more time behind bars if he is found guilty, given laws around credit from time served.
Comments closedThe United Conservative Party’s board is urging Premier Danielle Smith to reform COVID vaccine policy because the directors are worried about the safety of mRNA vaccines for kids, the party president says.
“We have serious concerns about them for children,” Rob Smith, the UCP president, told CBC News in an interview Friday.
“I would say that the board of directors’ position is that if parents are going to get their children vaccinated, they need to be very, very sure that they know what they’re doing.”
Comments closedCanada’s lull in COVID-19 cases faces a potential disruption with the emergence of a new family of subvariants, playfully dubbed the ‘FLiRT’ variants.
These genetic cousins, originating from JN.1, the Omicron subvariant that fuelled the winter surge, are now spreading nationwide, with one variant, KP.2, quickly gaining dominance in Canada.
KP.2 is the dominant subvariant of the JN.1 strain, explained Gerald Evans, an infectious disease specialist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. As of April 28, national data shows that KP.2 accounted for 26.6 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in Canada, surpassing other JN.1 subvariants.
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