The Trump administration is shuttering HHS’ long Covid office as part of its reorganization, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO.
The email was sent Monday by Ian Simon, the head of the Office of Long Covid Research and Practice. It said the closing is part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ reorganization.
Comments closedNova Scotians and New Brunswickers at the highest risk for severe illness from a COVID-19 infection can now book an appointment for a spring vaccine.
The dose will be available from March 31 to June 30 in Nova Scotia. Children aged six months to 11 years can get the vaccine until June 17.
The New Brunswick spring campaign will run from April 7 to June 30. People will be able to book appointments starting March 28. For children under the age of 12, the vaccine will be available until June 21.
Nova Scotia says it is following recommendations from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization for the spring dose.
Comments closedThe UNAIDS program head has said millions more will die as a result of the sudden cuts to funding by the Trump administration. She also warned that the AIDS pandemic could return to 1990s levels.
The head of the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, said on Monday that over 6 million additional deaths from the disease are expected after the US slashed its funding.
Comments closedCOVID may no longer be considered an official global emergency, but mounting scientific evidence suggests every COVID infection a person gets increases their risk of developing long-term health issues.
“There is no such thing as a COVID infection without consequence,” says long COVID researcher, David Putrino, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
The long-term effects can show up as long COVID, with symptoms such as shortness of breath, digestive problems, fast or irregular heartbeats, extreme fatigue and brain fog, or as silently accumulating cellular or organ damage.
Comments closedThere’s been another sharp increase in Ontario measles cases as the province begins to release weekly reports on the infectious disease.
Public Health Ontario is reporting 470 measles cases since an outbreak began in October. That’s an increase of 120 cases since March 14.
The spread resulted in 34 hospitalizations, including two people who needed intensive care. Most of those hospitalized were unvaccinated kids, including one of the intensive care patients.
The outbreak expansion adds to the growing concern of rising measles cases in different parts of the country, including in Quebec where there are 40 cases and Alberta where there are 13, according to the latest data.
Comments closedPeople who later experienced persistent shortness of breath or fatigue after a COVID infection were already taking significantly fewer steps per day and had a higher resting heart rate before contracting the virus, according to a CSH study published in npj Digital Medicine. This may indicate lower fitness levels or pre-existing conditions as potential risk factors
Between April 2020 and December 2022, over 535,000 people in Germany downloaded and activated the Corona Data Donation App (CDA). Of these, more than 120,000 voluntarily shared daily data from their smartwatches and fitness trackers with researchers, providing insights into vital functions such as resting heart rate and step count.
“These high-resolution data served as the starting point for our study,” explains CSH researcher Katharina Ledebur. “We were able to compare vital signs in 15-minute intervals before, during, and after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
Comments closedA push by Donald Trump’s administration to repeal a barrage of clean air and water regulations may deal a severe blow to US public health, with a Guardian analysis finding that the targeted rules were set to save the lives of nearly 200,000 people in the years ahead.
Last week, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provoked uproar by unveiling a list of 31 regulations it will scale back or eliminate, including rules limiting harmful air pollution from cars and power plants; restrictions on the emission of mercury, a neurotoxin; and clean water protections for rivers and streams.
Comments closedRobert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.
Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.
Comments closedIn a Swedish cohort, the risk of long COVID was much lower for vaccinated than unvaccinated participants in the year after infection, even when restricting the analyses to subgroups based on variant, age, sex, and previous infection status, estimates a study published last week in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Karolinska Institutet researchers in Stockholm analyzed data from five registries to compare rates of persistent COVID-19 symptoms, or post-COVID condition [PCC], in adults infected from January 2021 to February 2022 by vaccination status in the 14 days before infection. Follow-up was 365 to 660 days.
Comments closedThe blitzkrieg launched against science by the Trump administration is unprecedented, and all the more shocking as it comes from a democratic country. The brutality of the layoffs of civil servants, the halting of funding and the blocking of research programs is astounding. The Orwellian dimension of the move came to light with the publication of a list of terms that must no longer be used in research and working papers – climate, pollution, injustice, reference to gender or race… So much so that some scientists are beginning to devise different phrases to pass Trump’s censors.
Comments closedCrowds of people suffering long COVID rallied outside the Vancouver Art Gallery Saturday afternoon to raise awareness of the debilitating effects felt by those still battling the disease.
People had gathered to call on the government to assist with funding for further research into symptoms and treatments, disability support, public awareness, and training for medical staff.
Via placards and speeches, protesters described their own various experiences and asked passers by and others in attendance to send letters to their MLA’s and MP’s, requesting support.
According to Statistics Canada, 3.5 million Canadians continue to suffer symptoms five years after the global outbreak of COVID-19.
Comments closed“There are people who don’t believe that,” says Valérie, who was in front of the Quebec National Assembly on Saturday to mark the International Long COVID Awareness Day. After catching COVID-19 just over three years ago, she has never recovered.
After her brief visit to the public awareness event organized by the Canadian COVID Society on Saturday, “it’s the rest of my day coming to an end,” says Valérie. When she returns home, she knows that she will have to stay in bed and avoid all contact.
Comments closedIt’s now been five years since the COVID pandemic stopped the world in its tracks. The virus is still with us, and continues to make people sick. As many as 1 in 5 Canadians have experienced symptoms of long COVID, but scientists are finding that beyond that, each infection can also lead to long term silent cellular and organ damage. David Putrino, who’s been studying COVID’s long term effects at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, says even mild or asymptomatic COVID infections can lead to a wide range of silent long term heath impacts — compromising our immune, vascular, circulatory, renal, metabolic, gastrointestinal systems and even cognitive function.
Comments closedIn Gaines County, Texas, where a measles outbreak has killed one six-year-old and one adult, the measles vaccination rate among kindergarteners is just 82 per cent, according to reporting by The Atlantic.
That’s a higher measles vaccination rate than children have here in B.C.
Just under 82 per cent of two-year-olds have gotten one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine, and around 72 per cent of seven-year-olds have gotten both doses, according to the B.C. Childhood Immunization Coverage Dashboard’s 2023 data, which is the most recent data year available.
Comments closedThe Québec network of clinics for long COVID still receives, each month, a hundred new patients, who sometimes have to wait up to six months before they can be treated.
“The problem now is that we have an accumulation of complex cases. It’s difficult to get new cases into treatment because we can’t finish with some patients,” says Simon Décary, Chair of the Long COVID Clinics Steering Committee.
Around 5% of people who contract COVID will still experience sequelae between three months and one year after infection. And around 1% of the population will have severe functional limitations to the point of needing services, says the physiotherapist.
Comments closedThe federal government has cancelled a deal with vaccine maker Novavax to manufacture COVID-19 vaccine in Montreal, the company said in a filing with the U.S. securities regulator.
Novavax told the Securities and Exchange Commission that the Canadian government cancelled the deal March 7 after the company failed to meet a Dec. 31, 2024 deadline to get regulatory approval for a COVID-19 vaccine using ingredients made at the federally-owned Biologics Manufacturing Centre in Montreal.
