Comments closedThe reality is that people are dying from COVID in our hospitals, and we really are doing very little to prevent them getting ill and getting infected. And we wouldn’t do the same for any other infectious disease.
December 10, 2024 (British Columbia, Canada) – Advocacy groups in BC are calling on policy-makers to immediately reinstate healthcare mask requirements. The call comes as BC faces severe risks from COVID-19, a rise in “walking pneumonia,” local measles warnings, and Canada’s first human case of H5N1 avian influenza – which health officials warn could potentially turn into another pandemic.
Comments closedCanada’s postsecondary institutions have a responsibility to protect students and others on campus from the risks of post-COVID condition as a matter of campus safety.
Canada’s Chief Science Advisor, Mona Nemer, recently released the report, Dealing with the Fallout: Post-COVID Condition and its Continued Impacts on Individuals and Society.
Post-COVID condition (PCC), also known as “long COVID,” refers to the poorly understood and often serious health damage left by the SARS-CoV-2 virus after the acute illness appears to have passed.
Universities, colleges and schools have a duty to take reasonable precautions to protect students, staff and faculty from foreseeable harms. They must ensure the water on campus is safe to drink. They must install fire and carbon monoxide detectors and make evacuation plans. Many have adopted a smoke-free policy on campus as part of a commitment to an international charter on health promotion in universities and colleges. Yet there is little pandemic health promotion on Canadian campuses.
Comments closedA mask mandate is returning to health-care facilities in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The mandate will take effect on Tuesday, Oct. 29, according to an internal memo obtained by CBC News and later confirmed by Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services.
It will require everyone to wear masks in clinical areas, including waiting rooms and nursing stations. It also applies to visitors of patients in hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Comments closedEastern Ontario’s children’s hospital is reintroducing safety measures for the viral season, including requiring people to wear a mask in clinical areas and waiting rooms and limiting the number of caregivers accompanying a patient to an appointment.
CHEO says the viral season can bring a “triple threat for children and youth” with seasonal influenza, COVID-19 and RSV.
Comments closedToronto’s University Health Network (UHN) is upping its masking requirements amid respiratory virus season.
As of Oct. 28, patients, visitors and staff will need to wear a mask while waiting for care, receiving care and in high-risk areas, UHN said in an update on its website.
Comments closedSince the COVID pandemic began, claims that the disease poses only minimal risk to children have spread widely, on the presumption that the lower rate of severe acute illness in kids tells the whole story. Notions that children are nearly immune to COVID and don’t need to be vaccinated have pervaded.
These ideas are wrong. People making such claims ignore the accumulating risk of long COVID, the constellation of long-term health effects caused by infection, in children who may get infected once or twice a year. The condition may already have affected nearly six million kids in the U.S. Children need us to wake up to this serious threat. If we do, we can help our kids with a few straightforward and effective measures.
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 closedThe Nassau County Legislature passed the Mask Transparency Act Monday – a law that prohibits the wearing of masks in public in some scenarios.
Those over the age of 16 will not be allowed to wear masks, unless it is being worn for the person’s health, religion or celebratory purposes. Officials say police will be the ones to determine whether or not the masks are being used for those purposes.
Legislators explained their reasoning for supporting the measure during the hearing.
Comments closedIt was a familiar scene, but one that is becoming less common in Ottawa and across the country.
On a recent Friday, people arriving for an outdoor concert and dance at Saw Gallery in downtown Ottawa were greeted with signs telling them that masks were mandatory. The same signs thanked them for supporting their community.
Participants happily complied. Some said they have continued to mask and seek out COVID-safe spaces since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Others said they don’t always wear masks in public, but do so when there is a higher risk or they are protecting those who are more vulnerable.
Comments closedThe Tour de France has reinstated COVID-19 protective measures, requiring race organizers, media, and guests to wear masks when in contact with riders and team staff. This protocol was announced by race organizer ASO on Sunday morning after several recent COVID-19 cases among the peloton.
“In order to limit health risks, it is now compulsory to wear a mask in the various areas where you will be in contact with the riders and members of the cycling teams,” read the statement from the ASO.
Riders who have abandoned the race due to the virus include Tom Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers), Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates), and Michael Mørkøv (Astana-Qazaqstan). Geraint Thomas (INEOS Grenadiers) remains in the Tour despite testing positive, as the rules currently allow.
Comments closedDisabled North Carolina residents say a mask restriction that is under consideration in the state legislature would make it harder for them to access parts of their communities, pushing them back into isolation.
“This law says to them that you are not welcome in our community and we don’t value your presence to accommodate your need to wear a mask,” Tara Muller, a policy attorney at Disability Rights North Carolina, told ABC News.
House Bill 237, dubbed the “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals” bill, would repeal a COVID-19 pandemic exception that allowed people to wear a face mask in public. It allows exceptions for holiday costumes, rituals or ceremonies, theatrical productions, gas masks or employment-based usage, but would remove the ability for someone to wear a mask to ensure “the physical health or safety of the wearer or others.”
Nova Scotia Health will no longer require people to wear masks when entering its facilities, unless they are symptomatic.
The health authority updated its rules on Tuesday, stating that it will continue to monitor levels of respiratory illness, including COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Comments closedThe North Carolina House voted against a bill that would’ve banned mask-wearing in public Wednesday.
The Senate passed it last week as part of an effort to crack down on people who wear masks at protests so they can commit crimes.
Lawmakers in the House worried it went too far, saying the law may be unfairly enforced against people who wear masks for health concerns.
Leaders in the House and Senate will soon meet to try to iron out a compromise.
Comments closedA North Carolina bill partially meant to address mask-wearing at protests was under review Wednesday after some House Republicans raised issue with the legislation’s impact on people who wear masks for health reasons.
The state House voted not to accept changes made to the bill by the state Senate that would remove a pandemic-era masking exemption for health purposes.
Comments closedWhen a Texan farm worker caught bird flu from cattle recently, social media was abuzz with rumours. While bird flu is not a human pandemic, scientists and policymakers the world over are keen to prepare as best they can for when such a pandemic emerges – a tricky task, given that science is messy, policy must be pragmatic and people’s values don’t always align.
It’s time for masks to enter the chat. At the beginning of a pandemic caused by a novel or newly mutated virus, there may be no vaccine, no firm knowledge about how bad things will get and no specific treatment. Slowing transmission until more is known will be critical.
Getting most people to wear a mask could nip the outbreak in the bud, preventing a pandemic or lessening its impact. Wearing a mask is inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as lockdowns.
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