Last year on this date, I published a Tyee article about the fifth anniversary of the first public announcement of what we now know as COVID-19.
My conclusions then were that we hadn’t learned much from the experience. A year later, many of us have unlearned the value of vaccination. Outbreaks of measles and whooping cough have predictably followed. Alberta has stopped reporting COVID-19 in hospitals.
Comments closedMARYLAND (WJZ) — Maryland has some of the highest cases of Lyme disease in the nation, yet funding for research is in jeopardy.
Lyme disease is the most common and fastest-growing vector-borne disease in the United States. Approximately 476,000 Americans are diagnosed and treated for it each year, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In Maryland, Lyme disease cases have nearly doubled since 2020, according to the latest data from the Maryland Department of Health.
Comments closedAlberta Health Services (AHS) has instituted a masking requirement for four hospitals in the Edmonton area.
An enhanced masking directive is in place at Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, Royal Alexandra Hospital, Stollery Children’s Hospital and the University of Alberta Hospital.
This means all patients, designated support persons and visitors must wear a mask in the emergency departments of the above acute care facilities. There are signs at the front entrance of each location signalling where enhanced masking is happening, AHS says.
Comments closedIt’s more than just a bad cold: influenza can also raise your risk of a heart attack shortly after an infection, medical experts are warning as the H3N2 strain spreads rapidly in Canada.
At the same time, flu season is coinciding with another risk factor for heart attacks – shovelling snow.
“Any time you get an infection, including a viral infection, there’s the release in your body of molecules that both trigger inflammation and sustain inflammation. And part of that is an increased tendency for your blood to clot,” said Dr. Fahad Razak, internal medicine physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and professor at the University of Toronto.
“That can have immediate effects within the weeks following an infection, resulting in things like strokes or heart attacks.”
Comments closedHeather Hanwell’s 12-year-old daughter recently missed almost two weeks of school after being hit hard by a viral infection. She’s among many parents who are caring for sick kids this flu season, which so far has seen a surge of cases among school-age children.
But the experience was particularly frustrating for Dr. Hanwell, an epidemiologist who says that improving the air quality in schools would help reduce the spread of contagious respiratory illnesses.
Comments closedThe volunteer-led organization Ontario School Safety is renewing calls to the Ontario government to improve indoor air quality in schools.
The call comes as Ontario sees a rapid increase in cases of the flu, particularly impacting young children.
In April, 2021, the Government of Ontario announced it was investing over $130 million, in addition to funds from the Canadian government, to upgrade school infrastructure to protect children from COVID-19. The majority of this funding was earmarked for ventilation projects to improve indoor air quality.
Comments closedAt a neighbourhood Christmas party in Ottawa earlier this month, there were all the usual holiday delights: festive decor, treats and even a visit from the big man up North. It was an evening to remember for Christine Guptill, but not in the way she had imagined.
Tucked into a party room at Royale Ranch, a horse farm in the city’s south, there were nearly 40 people at the party – half children, half adults. Ms. Guptill said some children were coughing and she overheard one family say they had left their sick kid at home.
Comments closedWork-related factors may increase the risk of developing long COVID, according to a new population-based study from Spain.
The findings, published in BMJ Occupational & Environmental Medicine, suggest that the primary work-related drivers of increased long COVID risk were irregular or limited use of respirators, close contact with coworkers and/or the public, inability to physical distance, and use of public transportation to commute to work.
Comments closedNova Scotia Health says masking is required throughout all its facilities beginning Thursday.
However, the health authority says masks are not required in:
Alberta’s government quietly eliminated its public reporting dashboard of COVID-19 outbreaks in acute care facilities, saying the province is under no legal obligation to continue publishing the data in a “post-pandemic context.”
Alberta Health Services’ (AHS) acute-care outbreaks webpage provided weekly public reports on COVID-19 outbreaks in AHS and Covenant Health facilities, including the location where an outbreak had been reported, the date the outbreak was declared, the number of units affected, and how many patients and health-care workers were infected.
Comments closedTORONTO – A new poll says that about three-quarters of Canadian adults still have confidence in vaccines, but hesitancy has increased over the last five years.
The survey conducted by Leger Healthcare and released on Tuesday says 74 per cent of respondents said they were either “very confident” (42 per cent) or “somewhat confident” (32 per cent) in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
But about a quarter of respondents said they are less confident than they were before.
Comments closedWork-related factors play a significant and independent role in the risk of developing Long-COVID, shows a new study based on the COVICAT cohort and led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Turin and the Germans Trias i Pujol Institute (IGTP). The findings, published in BMJ Occupational & Environmental Medicine, highlight that a substantial share of Long-COVID could be prevented through targeted workplace measures and policies.
The public health impact of Long-COVID is far from over. Beyond ongoing infections that continue to cause illness and deaths worldwide, millions of people are living with lasting health consequences. Globally, around 6 in every 100 COVID-19 cases develop Long-COVID, amounting to 400 million affected people and an annual economic impact of roughly 1 trillion dollars, or 1% of the global economy.
Comments closedCOVID-19 does not just affect the respiratory system, but also significantly alters the brain in people who have fully recovered from the infectious disease, highlighting the long-term neurological impact of the virus.
Researchers from Griffith University’s National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Disease (NCNED) used advanced MRI techniques to ascertain the neurological implications of COVID-19 compared with those who had never been infected.
The research provided compelling evidence that even in the absence of ongoing symptoms, prior infection with the virus could leave a measurable imprint on the brain.
Comments closedThree children have died from flu-related complications in the Ottawa area this month, as officials warn of a “rapid and significant rise” in influenza A cases.
In a statement released Monday morning, Ottawa Public Health said three children between the ages of five and nine have died from influenza A-related complications in the Ottawa and Eastern Ontario Health Unit regions during the first two weeks of December.
Comments closedTORONTO – A new study says the COVID-19 vaccine protects pregnant women from getting severely ill or giving birth prematurely.
Researchers with the Canadian Surveillance of COVID-19 in Pregnancy (CANCOVID-Preg) program, led by the University of British Columbia analyzed public health and clinical records of 19,899 pregnant people diagnosed with COVID between April 5, 2021 and Dec. 31, 2022.
That time period covered infections with both Delta and Omicron variants in eight provinces and one territory.
Comments closedHealth Minister Marjorie Michel says she worries about how recent actions by U.S. public health agencies, like removing a universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for American infants, could hurt Canadians’ health.
“It’s a big worry for me,” Michel said in an interview on CBC’s The House that airs Saturday morning. “The U.S. is our closest neighbour. And it’s a big neighbour.”
“It’s absolutely crucial to work with provinces and territories to be all on the same page, for example, on vaccination,” Michel told host Catherine Cullen.
Comments closedA leading liver expert is calling on the Ontario government to re-evaluate its hepatitis B vaccination strategy, saying some children are falling through the cracks and getting diagnosed with hepatitis B virus (HBV) before vaccines are offered at age 12.
That puts them at high risk for a life of chronic illness and even liver cancer that could have been prevented, says Dr. Jordan Feld, director of the Toronto Centre for Liver Disease at the University Health Network and a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. He wants Ontario to follow international guidance and vaccinate children at birth.
His comments come amid an outcry in the United States after a Centres for Disease Control panel, appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted to scrap birth doses of the vaccine. That decision has been heavily criticized by experts, who say the change is not based on science and will put children at risk.
Comments closed