Canada has formally lost its measles elimination status, the country’s public health agency announced Monday, meaning all of the Americas have lost that status as well.
The decision, which was widely expected, comes after a meeting last week where an expert committee of the Pan American Health Organization determined that a large measles outbreak that began in Canada in October 2024 was still ongoing, more than 12 months after it started.
Comments closedCanada has been stripped of its measles elimination status after failing to interrupt transmission within one year of an outbreak that continues to spread in parts of the country.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said Monday it was notified by The Pan American Health Organization, a regional arm of the World Health Organization, that Canada lost its designation – an accomplishment it held for 27 years.
“While transmission has slowed recently, the outbreak has persisted for over 12 months, primarily within under-vaccinated communities,” the statement said.
Comments closedThe Pan American Health Organization has informed the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) that Canada no longer has the status of a country that has eliminated measles, due to an outbreak that has been ongoing for more than one year.
This status indicates that there is no continuous transmission of the disease for 12 months or more in a given geographical area.
“Despite considerable efforts by Canada, the country has lost its status. Measles is now considered to be endemic in this country,” PAHO director Dr. Jason Barbosa told a news conference.
Comments closedThe Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Alberta has launched an online campaign against the province’s $100 fee for Albertans who want to get a COVID-19 vaccination.
A new website calls on the province to “axe the vax tax.”
The website calls the fee unfair, reckless and dangerous, and allows Albertans to write a letter to Premier Danielle Smith, Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi and their local MLAs protesting the province’s decision to charge Albertans $100 for a COVID vaccine this year.
Comments closedThere had been a shortage of the vaccine in recent days after the previous supply’s cold chain – the mechanism by which vaccines are kept refrigerated prior to use – broke down.
On Friday morning, the health authority said more supplies had arrived and anyone can now request a Covid-19 vaccine at Yellowknife’s Centre Square Mall clinic.
Comments closedChanges to the Alberta government’s COVID vaccination plan this year mean many Albertans are facing long waitlists and a hefty bill to get their shot.
With the government-run program only offered through public health clinics and many of those clinics experiencing long waits, some Albertans are choosing instead to go to their local pharmacist to get immunized — as they have done in previous years.
Comments closedChildren and young people faced long-lasting and higher risks of rare heart and inflammatory complications after COVID-19 infection, compared to before or without an infection, according to new research. Meanwhile COVID-19 vaccination was only linked to a short-term higher risk of myocarditis and pericarditis.
The study is the largest of its kind in this population, and is published today in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health. It was led by scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, and University College London, with support from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre at Health Data Research UK.
Comments closedThe risk of long COVID was 36% lower in adolescents vaccinated within 6 months before their first infection than in their unvaccinated peers, suggests an analysis of US Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) trial data published late last week in Vaccine.
The study, led by Massachusetts General Hospital researchers, involved 724 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years who were vaccinated against COVID-19 within the previous 6 months and 507 unvaccinated youth matched on sex, symptom onset, and enrollment date.
Comments closedThe risk of a heart attack triples within the first few weeks after a Covid-19 infection, the study suggested, and quadruples in the month after a flu infection. The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, was a large review and analysis of existing research.
“It endorses a general idea that we’ve been thinking about and talking about for the past several years — that infections are generally not benign,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study.
Comments closedSt. John’s hosted the 2025 Canadian Symposium on Long COVID earlier this month, a gathering of top researchers, clinicians, and people living with long COVID. As the CBC’s Adam Walsh reports, those on the symposium floor say more needs to be done to bring awareness to the condition as it continues to impact people of all ages.
Comments closedOctober 28, 2025 (Ottawa): As Canada enters another respiratory virus season, pharmacists are urging Canadians to protect themselves and their communities as new polling shows vaccination intentions remain low.
According to a new national survey conducted by Abacus Data for the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA), 43% of Canadians plan to get their seasonal flu shot, and 29% intend to receive a COVID-19 vaccine this fall. Most concerning, nearly 4 in 10 Canadians (39%) say they don’t plan to get either vaccine.
Comments closedThe updated 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccines provided 57% protection against hospitalization and death, although their effectiveness waned over time, according to a study yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The study assessed effectiveness against infection, emergency department (ED) visits, and hospitalization. Protection against infection and ED visits was 45%.
The study was based on outcomes seen among Nebraskan residents during the 2024-25 respiratory virus season and used hospital discharge data from member hospitals of the Nebraska Hospital Association and data from death certificates from the Nebraska Office of Vital Records.
Comments closedTORONTO — Canada is poised to lose its international status as a measles-free country now that an outbreak that began in New Brunswick and spread to other provinces has hit the one-year mark.
The country eliminated measles in 1998 and maintained that status for more than 25 years, meaning there was no ongoing community transmission and new cases were travel-related.
But since Oct. 27, 2024, the virus has spread to more than 5,000 people in Canada, including two infants in Ontario and Alberta who were infected with measles in the womb and died after they were born.
Comments closedEDMONTON – Alberta doctors say the province’s effort to save money on COVID-19 vaccines could end up costing taxpayers far more in public health-care costs.
Dr. Brian Wirzba, head of the Alberta Medical Association, which represents doctors in the province, says there’s still time for the government to improve public communication about vaccines and make them more accessible.
“In my clinic talking to patients, they’re still confused about how they could even get it,” said Wirzba, who practises internal medicine in Edmonton.
Comments closedSome Albertans struggled to book COVID-19 shots as the province’s fall immunization campaign opened to the general public on Monday.
By late afternoon, Health Link had been flooded with more than 10,000 calls related to the COVID vaccine alone and a spokesperson for Primary Care Alberta confirmed the provincial health information phone line was facing extremely high call volumes.
Comments closedWalk-in clinics for the flu and Covid-19 vaccine open in Yellowknife later in October, the NWT’s health authority confirmed in a schedule issued late last week.
Comments closedThe innovative messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines that thwarted the ravages of COVID-19 may also help fight tumors in cancer patients, according to a new analysis of medical records and studies in mice.
People with cancer who coincidentally received the mRNA shots before starting drugs designed to unleash the immune system against tumors lived significantly longer than those who didn’t get vaccinated, a research team announced yesterday at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin. Laboratory experiments by the group suggest the vaccines rev up the immune system, making even stubborn tumors more susceptible to treatment.
Comments closedFederal health officials are examining the feasibility of taking aluminum salts out of vaccines, a prospect that vaccine experts said would wipe out about half of the nation’s supply of childhood inoculations and affect shots that protect against whooping cough, polio and deadly flu.
The review at the Food and Drug Administration began after President Trump listed aluminum in vaccines as harmful during a press briefing about the unproven link between Tylenol and autism.
Aluminum salts have been in vaccines since the 1920s and are added to enhance the immune-stimulating effect against the virus or bacteria covered by the inoculation. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, has been a longtime critic of aluminum in vaccines, which he has suggested is linked to autism.
Vaccine experts said the tiny amount of aluminum salts in vaccines — often measured in the one-millionth of a gram — has a long track record of safety and is essential to generating lasting immunity from disease. Developing vaccines without aluminum salts, they said, would require an entirely new formulation from scratch.
Comments closed