People who are homeless have high rates of COVID-19 reinfection, putting the health of an already vulnerable population at further risk, a study published Friday in the BMC Infectious Diseases journal says.
Homeless people in Toronto who had COVID-19 were more than twice as likely to get it again as people who had housing, said lead author Lucie Richard, a senior research associate at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital.
Comments closedCases of influenza, RSV and COVID-19 all increased in B.C. this week, according to the latest respiratory illness data from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
All three diseases remain well below their recent transmission peaks, however.
There were 528 positive tests for influenza in the province during the most recent epidemiological week, which spanned Jan. 21 to 27. That’s an increase from the 442 positive tests recorded the week before.
Comments closed📣 Let Ottawa Public Health, Ottawa’s mayor, and city councillors know you want continued access to the city’s COVID-19 dashboard.
✉️ Send letters to let them know you want continued access to updated data in the COVID-19 dashboard, and elsewhere on the City of Ottawa’s website. You can use your own email software to send the letters.
Comments closedToday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers published findings showing adults who received an updated 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccine were 54% less likely to have symptomatic infection than those who didn’t, and the vaccine was found to protect against JN.1 and other circulating variants.
This is one of the first studies to update 2023-24 COVID vaccine effectiveness (VE) data. The monovalent (single-strain) booster vaccine derived from XBB.1.5 was approved for use in all Americans 6 months and older on September 12, 2023, but uptake has been low. Moreover, the XBB strains of the virus, which the vaccine was based on, are no longer the dominant strains in the United States, having been replaced by JN.1 in December 2023.
Comments closedMandatory masking is returning to all areas where clinical care is provided in health facilities in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Health Minister Tom Osborne told CBC News Thursday the recommendation was made by the Infection Prevention And Control team at N.L. Health Services, aiming to protect people inside the hospital and those entering the facilities.
Comments closedCOVID-19 has killed three more New Brunswickers and a new subvariant, JN.1, appears to be on its way to taking over as the dominant strain in the province.
COVID-19 activity remains “moderate,” according to Tuesday’s Respiratory Watch report. Most indicators remained “stable” throughout the reporting period, Jan. 14 to Jan. 20, it says.
The flu has killed two more people, but influenza activity decreased during the reporting week, with the number of new cases dropping back to historical averages, the report shows.
Comments closedOttawa Public Health is clarifying the confusion that has been circulating on social media around its plans to phase out its COVID-19 dashboard.
While the current COVID-19 dashboard will be discontinued in February, the health unit pledges to continue to give updates about COVID-19 and respiratory illnesses circulating in the capital.
Comments closedIn an attempt to establish a definitive objective cognitive marker for PCC, or post-COVID-19 condition, researchers tested long COVID patients in Germany and the United Kingdom with cognitive speed tests, and found long COVID patients have a significant lag, suggesting cognitive slowing.
The study, published yesterday in eClincialMedicine, was based on findings on an initial 194 long COVID patient seen at a PCC clinic in Germany. Findings were then replicated in a follow up COVID clinic in the United Kingdom.
All study participants had one or more symptoms of PCC at least 12 weeks following a lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection. They were compared to two control groups, one group that had never had a COVID-19 infection and one group that had COVID-19 12 or more weeks prior but no evidence of PCC.
Comments closedAs all of us know, the COVID-19 pandemic was the worst public health crisis in more than a century. Since the first cases four years ago, well more than 100 million Americans have gotten the virus, more than 6.7 million Americans have been hospitalized and more than 1 million Americans have died.
More Americans have died from COVID-19 than were killed during World War II.
The pandemic created the most painful economic downturn since the Great Depression, disrupted the education of our young people and increased isolation, anxiety and mental illness.
I am more than aware that many Americans are tired of hearing about COVID-19 and would like to sweep it under the rug. Unfortunately, the virus is not done with us.
Comments closedFlu numbers dropped again over the last week, according to the latest data from Ottawa Public Health (OPH), and RSV trends did the same. Flu levels remain high and RSV’s are more moderate.
The COVID-19 picture remains generally high and stable.
Meanwhile, both the number of respiratory-related and overall emergency room visits in the city have dropped for three straight weeks.
Comments closedHundreds of doctors are planning to sue the NHS over claims inadequate PPE on the frontline has left them with long COVID, disabled, and in financial ruin.
Dr Kelly Fearnley, 37, was working on a COVID ward at Bradford Royal Infirmary in November 2020 when she caught coronavirus.
More than three years later, the effects of long COVID mean she is still unable to work. After episodes of violent shakes, hallucinations, and a resting heart rate more than double the average, she was diagnosed with limbic encephalitis – inflammation of parts of the brain.
Comments closedComments closedThe burden of disease and disability from long COVID is on par with the burden of cancer and heart disease. We must develop sustainable solutions to prevent repeated infections with SARS-CoV-2 and long COVID that would be embraced by the public.
A federal judge says the Liberal government’s use of the Emergencies Act in early 2022 to clear convoy protesters was unreasonable.
“I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable and ultra vires,” Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley wrote in a Tuesday decision. “Ultra vires” is a Latin term used by courts to refer to actions beyond the scope of the law.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters at a cabinet retreat in Montreal that the government plans to appeal the decision.
Comments closedA judge has authorized a class-action lawsuit against the Quebec government on behalf of all residents of public long-term care homes that experienced major COVID-19 outbreaks during the pandemic’s first year.
The lawsuit in Superior Court alleges that the province’s response to the first two waves of COVID-19 was improvised and that a pre-existing pandemic plan was ignored until it was too late.
Members of the class action include anyone living in a public long-term care centre that experienced a COVID-19 outbreak that infected at least 25 per cent of residents between March 13, 2020 and March 20, 2021.
Comments closedMembers of far-right convoy groups are holding private meetings where they are developing an ambitious and unorthodox plan to occupy police stations in cities across Canada in order to pressure police into arresting government officials.
The “Team Lead” for the plan is Dana Metcalfe, an organizer of the original Freedom Convoy who is currently facing criminal harassment charges after staging a “surprise convoy” to the home of the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.
On a Zoom call Monday night, Metcalfe was joined by over 100 others, including several leaders of the “Save the Children Convoy,” a group influenced by sovereign citizen and QAnon rhetoric that also planned arrests of politicians and police officers and has since established a rural basecamp near Ottawa.
Comments closedFollowing numerous representations, a group represented by lawyer Patrick Martin-Ménard has obtained authorization to proceed with a class action against the Government of Quebec on behalf of residents of long-term care facilities (CHSLDs) that experienced COVID-19 outbreaks during the first two waves of the pandemic, and on behalf of the families of those who died.
The main complainant in this application originally filed in April 2020, Jean-Pierre Daubois, had lost her 94-year-old mother, a resident of the Sainte-Dorothée CHSLD in Laval. During this first wave, nearly half of the residents infected with COVID-19 in this facility had died.
According to the judgment consulted by Radio-Canada, nearly 120 public CHSLDs will be included in the class action.
Comments closedInstead of relying on a test of your infectiousness from Covid-19 and symptoms to determine the need to isolate, California now is ignoring the test results.
California’s Department of Health recently made major changes to its isolation requirements, one based on symptoms alone.
Comments closedA study aimed at countering online misinformation finds that health measures taken by governments to protect against COVID-19 helped save lives and reduce the number of people hospitalized in 2020.
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