Canadians raced to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in the first years of the pandemic, but data suggests there’s far less of a rush to get the latest shots available this fall.
Federal figures show only 15 per cent of the population aged five and up had received an updated vaccine by Dec. 3. And while older age groups had higher uptake rates, more than half of higher-risk older adults still hadn’t gotten a dose by early December, either.
Comments closedCOVID-19 is still a “key contributor” to higher death rates as new data reveals Australia’s nationwide mortality rate is sitting at more than six per cent higher than expected.
The national excess mortality rate for the first eight months of 2023 shows deaths are estimated at 6.1 per cent above expected levels.
It marks a drop from 14.1 per cent higher than expected mortality rates during the same period in 2022, according to data released this week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Comments closedDue to its rapid growth and potential to add to the respiratory virus burden in Northern Hemisphere countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) today designated JN.1, part of the BA.2.86 SARS-CoV-2 lineage, as its own variant of interest.
The announcement came following an assessment from the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
Comments closedNew Brunswick reported two more deaths from COVID-19, a week-over-week jump in hospitalizations and nursing home outbreaks because of the virus, and an increase in flu cases and hospitalizations Tuesday.
Comments closedQuebec Health Minister Christian Dubé and his chief public health officer warned Tuesday that the province is facing a major COVID-19 resurgence, coupled with a spike in influenza cases.
“We have a lot of vulnerable people that (are being hospitalized) because of influenza and because of COVID, and they should have been vaccinated,” Dubé said at a news conference.
“I think that the situation over the next few weeks will deteriorate. Let’s be clear about that.”
Comments closedTo reduce pressure on overflowing emergencies, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, asks people with non-emergency problems to practice self-care, contact their family doctor, family medicine group (GMF) or the 811 phone line instead of going to the hospital. He noted that 28 winter clinics are open and that agreements have recently been reached with residential settings to accommodate seniors trapped in hospital due to the lack of CHSLD spaces.
Emergency rooms are facing a “perfect storm”, says Christian Dubé: a cocktail of seasonal viruses, staff holidays (“earned”), a labour shortage (bigger than last year) and a lack of hospital beds with the aging population as a backdrop.
Comments closedOttawa-Carleton District School Board trustee Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth says she was subject to a threatening and antisemitic phone call against her which has led to a 39-year-old man from British Columbia being charged with hate-motivated offences on Monday.
In a press release on Monday morning, the Ottawa Police Service Hate and Crime Bias Unit say they charged a man with several offences for a phone call against a healthcare professional which also included mysoginistic and intimidating threats, but did not name the victim.
Comments closedCOVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech (22UAy.DE) aims to start production at its mRNA vaccine factory site in Rwanda in 2025, company officials said on Monday, the first foreign company mRNA vaccine manufacturing site on the continent.
The German company’s first modular factory elements, based on shipping containers, were delivered to the Kigali construction site in March and were then assembled into so-called BioNTainers.
Comments closedA long-running study into COVID-19 immunity has unearthed promising insights on the still-mysterious disease, one of its lead researchers says — but she’s concerned its funding could soon dry up.
The Stop the Spread project, a collaboration by the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa, has been monitoring antibody responses to COVID-19 in hundreds of people since October 2020.
Comments closedMore Ontarians have died of COVID-19 in a three-month span this fall than the number of people killed last year on Ontario highways — a comparison one researcher is using to illustrate the stark and ongoing toll of the virus.
Data from Public Health Ontario shows that 574 people died of COVID between Sept. 3 and Dec. 9. Last year, the Ontario Provincial Police reported that about 350 people died in motor vehicle crashes on OPP-patrolled roads.
Comments closedAn infectious disease researcher says COVID-19 cases in Newfoundland and Labrador are on the rise again — and that it comes at a time when the province isn’t showing the full picture when it comes to reporting statistics.
Tara Moriarty, a researcher and professor at the University of Toronto, told CBC News that COVID-19 cases are up across the country heading into the holiday season. And while Newfoundland and Labrador is in a slightly better situation, she said, her research indicates that about one in every 37 residents are infected by COVID-19.
Comments closed“We have to be able to have open conversations about the reality of COVID and not pretend that it’s not there,” infectious disease expert Dr. Dick Zoutman told the Whig-Standard in a candid interview about the terrible toll that the pandemic is taking on public health.
Data published by Public Health Ontario on Dec. 7 reveals that the COVID-19 Wastewater Signal for Eastern Ontario is rising on a steep curve. In other words, SARS-CoV-2, the airborne virus that causes COVID-19, is spreading out of control, sickening adults and children alike.
Comments closedIn the 18 months after a serious COVID-19 or seasonal influenza infection, patients are at a significant increased risk of death, hospital readmission, or health problems affecting a number of organs, though COVID patients are hit harder, according to a study published yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The study was led by Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University. Al-Aly has been studying long COVID for the past 3 years, and has been interested in studying the differences between the acute and chronic phases of the disease.
Comments closedHospitals and emergency rooms could be forced to ration care by the end of this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday, saying recent trends in COVID-19 and influenza are now on track to again strain America’s health care system. The new COVID variant JN.1 is making up an increasing share of cases, the CDC’s tracking shows.
“COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising quickly,” the agency said in its weekly update. “Since the summer, public health officials have been tracking a rise in multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), which is caused by COVID-19. Influenza activity is growing in most parts of the country. RSV activity remains high in many areas.”
Comments closedFour years ago, Sonja Mally was a busy tattoo artist with a photographic memory and penchant for long hikes.
Now, the 38-year-old Toronto woman considers it a good day if she can do a small drawing, muster the energy to walk around the block or “perform very basic tasks.”
“It’s a hard thing to have to explain to people why maybe one day you might be doing fine and the next day you can’t find the words to complete a sentence,” Mally said.
Comments closedA $300-million proposed class-action lawsuit filed against convoy protesters, donors and organizers on behalf of people who live or work in Ottawa is facing another challenge, with lawyers arguing the case seeks to unfairly limit fundamental freedoms.
“The levels of [COVID-19] are at the highest levels they’ve been ever […] There’s hundreds or even thousands of people that have COVID-19 right now.”
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