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Category: News

Manitoba reports first case of mpox, province says risk to public is low

The Manitoba government is reporting the first confirmed case of mpox in the province, noting it is also a strain that has not been seen in Canada before.

The province said a confirmed case of clade Ib mpox has been identified in Manitoba and is related to travel in central and eastern Africa.

“The individual was assessed and diagnosed shortly after returning to Manitoba and is currently isolating,” the province said in a news release. “Based on travel history and symptoms, specimens were tested and confirmed by the National Microbiology Laboratory for clade Ib mpox virus.”

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Covid Can Raise the Risk of Heart Problems for Years

Since nearly the start of the pandemic, scientists have known that a Covid-19 infection increases the risk of heart problems. A growing body of research now suggests that this risk can last until well after the infection has cleared.

One recent study, conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California and Cleveland Clinic, found that a Covid-19 infection doubled the risk of a major cardiovascular event for up to three years afterward. What’s more, the study found that infections severe enough to require hospitalization increased the likelihood of cardiac events as much as — or more than — having previously had a heart attack did.

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Pat King found guilty of mischief for role in ‘Freedom Convoy’

Pat King, one of the most prominent figures of the 2022 “Freedom Convoy” in Ottawa, has been found guilty on five counts including mischief and disobeying a court order.

A judge in an Ottawa courtroom Friday said the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that King was guilty on one count each of mischief, counselling others to commit mischief and counselling others to obstruct police. He was also found guilty of two counts of disobeying a court order.

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Like ‘old Twitter’: The scientific community finds a new home on Bluesky

In July 2023, Adam Kucharski asked his Twitter followers: What platform do you think you will be spending the most time on a year from now? Like many scientists on Twitter, Kucharski, a mathematical modeler of infectious diseases, was increasingly frustrated with changes to the platform since Elon Musk bought it in October 2022. But of the more than 1300 people who responded to his poll, the vast majority expected to keep posting on Twitter, which was renamed X just 2 weeks later. About one-quarter were banking on Threads, Meta’s Twitter rival. Only about 7% chose Bluesky.

Now, that has changed, in a big way. Although academics mostly stuck with X in the year after the poll, Bluesky has rapidly emerged as the new online gathering place for researchers, Kucharski among them. They are drawn by its Twitter-like feel, welcoming features, and, increasingly, the critical mass of scientists in many fields who have already made the move. “The majority has spoken, and researchers are moving en masse” to Bluesky, says De-Shaine Murray, a neuroscientist at Yale University who has also migrated to Bluesky.

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RFK Jr. is a danger to health care in the U.S. — and Canada

You would think that the return of a Kennedy scion to the White House would be a moment to celebrate, at least for many of a particular political stripe. But the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the new Trump administration has left many aghast, especially doctors, scientists, and educators.

Despite president John F. Kennedy having famously championed the polio vaccine, his nephew, RFK Jr., is an avowed anti-vaccination zealot, blaming a host of repeatedly unproven ills on such inoculations.

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Masking is a right

Content warning: brief mentions of genocide.

We’re still in a pandemic nearly five years after the first outbreak of COVID-19, but some places in the US and Canada are criminalizing the use of face masks in public. North Carolina has passed a law that restricts wearing masks, the governor of New York supports similar restrictions, and university campuses in California have enacted policies limiting masks. Here in Canada, people in Toronto have been arrested for wearing masks while protesting. Each of these restrictions seek to stop people from “concealing their identities.” The bans present multiple problems: the first is that they pose a risk to public health, and particularly the safety of disabled people. Second, they specifically target activists protesting against the genocide of Palestinians. Both of these issues are related to the right to keep our communities safe, which should not be questioned.

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California reveals suspected avian flu case in child with mild symptoms

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) today said tests have identified a suspected avian flu infection in a child from Alameda County who had mild upper respiratory symptoms and no known contact with infected animals.

If confirmed, the case would mark the second avian flu infection in a child in North America from a yet undetermined source. Last week, health officials in Canada reported an H5N1 infection in a previously healthy British Columbia teen who is hospitalized in critical condition.

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Bird flu in Canada may have mutated to become more transmissible to humans

The teenager hospitalized with bird flu in British Columbia, Canada, may have a variation of the virus that has a mutation making it more transmissible among people, early data shows – a warning of what the virus can do that is especially worrisome in countries such as the US where some H5N1 cases are not being detected.

The US “absolutely” is not testing and monitoring bird flu cases enough, which means scientists could miss mutated cases like these, said Richard Webby, a virologist at St Jude children’s research hospital’s department of infectious diseases.

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H5N1 bird flu virus in Canadian teenager displays mutations demonstrating virus’ risk

The genetic sequence of the H5N1 bird flu virus that infected a teenager in British Columbia shows that the virus had undergone mutational changes that would make it easier for that version of H5N1 to infect people, scientists who have studied the data say.

There’s currently no evidence the teenager, who remains in critical condition in hospital, infected anyone else. If that’s the case, it is likely this mutated version of the virus would die out when the teen’s illness resolves. The source of the teen’s infection has not been determined, so it’s impossible to know for sure if the mutations were in the virus that infected him or her. But scientists think it is more likely that the mutations developed during the course of his or her infection.

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First clade 1 mpox case detected in US, in California

Over the weekend California reported the first known clade 1 mpox case in the United States, which involves someone who recently returned from an affected African country and sought care in San Mateo County.

Health officials from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) have not confirmed if the infection is cause by clade 1b, a more transmissible and severe mpox virus causing a widespread outbreak that started in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

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Student’s article spurs inspection of school’s HVAC system

Kingston Secondary School will have its automated heating, ventilation and air conditioning system inspected next week following the publication of a student-written article that found the concentration of carbon dioxide in the school exceeded safe levels.

Principal Darren Seymour sent a letter to students, staff and parents last week in response to the article that appeared in “The Bears Bulletin.”

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a “threat to science and health” in the United States

The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be a “health disaster” in the United States, warn disinformation experts. His penchant for conspiracy theories and anti-vaccination rhetoric is likely to colour the direction of US health agencies.

Timothy Caulfield, a professor at the University of Alberta who studies health misinformation, would never have imagined that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be at the head of federal health agencies. “I never thought that someone so dangerous and so malicious would be elevated to such a level of power. I’m very concerned.”

He is not alone in fearing the impact on medicine and science in the United States. David Gorski believes that the health of Americans is clearly at stake. “It’s going to cause generational damage and it’s going to reinforce people’s distrust of science,” says the professor of surgery at Wayne State University, an expert in medical misinformation and editor-in-chief of the Science Based Medicine website.

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RFK Jr condemned as ‘clear and present danger’ after Trump nomination

Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr as US secretary of health and human services has prompted widespread criticisms towards Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist who has embraced a slew of other debunked health-related conspiracy theories.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long record of promoting anti-vaccine views

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was building up a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, and becoming one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines.

Now, President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates vaccines.

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Many long COVID patients adjust to slim recovery odds as world moves on

There are certain phrases that Wachuka Gichohi finds difficult to hear after enduring four years of living with long COVID, marked by debilitating fatigue, pain,…

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Long Covid could cost the economy billions every year

Working days lost to long Covid could be costing the economy billions of pounds every year as patients struggle to cope with symptoms and return to work, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

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Canadian teen’s bird flu infection is not the version found in cows

A Canadian teenager who is in critical condition after contracting H5N1 bird flu was infected with a version of the virus that is different from the one circulating in dairy cattle in the United States, Canadian authorities announced Wednesday.

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg confirmed the infection was indeed caused by the H5N1 virus. But genetic sequencing showed that it is of a genotype that has been found in wild birds, not the version that has been circulating in dairy cattle in the U.S.

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Testing confirms B.C. teen infected with Canada’s first human case of avian flu

Federal health officials have confirmed that a B.C. teen who is currently in hospital has Canada’s first human case of H5N1 avian flu.

Testing at the national microbiology labaratory in Winnipeg confirmed the case Wednesday, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

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