Toronto microbiologist Dr. Samira Mubareka was part of the first Canadian research team to successfully isolate SARS-CoV-2 and study its genetic code. (Kevin van Paassen/Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre)
In early 2020, as Dr. Samira Mubareka was following global updates on a strange new virus first reported in China, people with pneumonia-like symptoms started showing up in her hospital in Toronto.
One of the patients that came to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre was a man who’d travelled back from Wuhan. He was quite sick — more so than others who’d proven to be false alarms, Mubareka thought.
Inside Sunnybrook — a stately, sprawling hospital campus in one of Toronto’s toniest neighbourhoods — a newly developed diagnostic test confirmed what she and others suspected: the man had Canada’s first official case of what’s now known as COVID-19.
“The fact that it came as early as January, it lit a fire,” Mubareka later recalled.
While dressed in full protective gear, the microbiologist and infectious diseases specialist took samples from the patient’s isolation room. Her team was then able to culture the virus from several specimens inside a Level 3 containment facility — just one piece of the global effort to better understand SARS-CoV-2.
Not long after, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. One day later, Mubareka’s team officially announced they’d isolated the virus behind it, joining other global scientists in offering hope that the world would be able to develop vaccines and treatments.
“Since then, we’ve just been following the virus around, whether it’s been variants of concern that have emerged in fairly rapid sequence, and finally following it into animals,” Mubareka said.
This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. (NIAID)
Two years into a pandemic that’s still raging around much of the globe, scientists like her are striving to unpack what makes this mysterious pathogen tick. Leading vaccines have proven remarkably effective at keeping severe disease at bay, yet SARS-CoV-2 remains a formidable foe — a mutating shapeshifter that’s evading our defences and capable of spreading at rapid rates rarely seen among other viruses.
Despite a surge in research, leading Canadian virologists and front-line physicians say burning questions remain over how the coronavirus operates and where this pandemic is heading.
Why are certain people so susceptible to infection, or serious illness? How will this virus continue to evolve? Which vaccines, drugs and public health strategies will protect our population from future variants? And where will SARS-CoV-2 show up next?
“There are just so many things we have to stay on top of,” Mubareka said.
Why does SARS-CoV-2 cause such a range of health impacts?
Two years’ worth of research into SARS-CoV-2 has painted an alarming picture of its uncanny ability to impact whole-body health. Studies have linked infections to a host of multi-organ issues, impacting everything from the brain to the gut to the heart, along with the entire circulatory system that pumps blood through your body.
Amid all the dire possible impacts, questions remain over why some people wind up with barely a sniffle, while others are ravaged by COVID-19.
Dr. Srinivas Murthy, a researcher on childhood infections and an associate professor in the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine, said that aside from whether someone is vaccinated or not, being elderly remains the clearest predictor of someone’s potential for severe COVID.
“Nothing impacts how you do with this virus more than age,” he said. “That’s corrected for how sick you are, how many comorbidities you have, and so on.”
As SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread around the world, two years’ worth of research has painted an alarming picture of its ability to impact whole-body health. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
But it’s not yet clear why this trend is seen at a staggering level beyond other viruses, which typically impact very young children to the same degree, he noted.
There are early signals that genetic differences might help explain why some people get hit so much harder than others, with one recent paper finding more than a dozen markers in those who developed severe COVID-19 — paving the way, potentially, for targeted treatments.
Then there’s long COVID — cases where people get over their initial infection but suffer lasting post-viral impacts, from cognitive difficulties to extreme fatigue. Those reactions seem to strike people more broadly, yet the condition remains little understood, with no known cure.
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March 11 marks the second anniversary of when the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. And CBC viewers share memorable photos that defined the pandemic for them. ‘We have always been a family who likes to celebrate occasions,’ said Sheryl Parker. ‘It looked a little different during the pandemic.’
(Submitted by Sheryl Parker)
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Sylvie Dumas and Paul Monette of Chelsea, Que., shared this photo of their virtual COVID family gathering. ‘We planned a meal, booked a Zoom with our children and grandson, but added a little something to make everyone smile (paper cutouts were set at each chair),’ she said. ‘Have to agree that not seeing family in person wasn’t always easy.’
(Sylvie Dumas)
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Mom Cristina Veloz-Piperni shared this photo collage of her daughter’s sidewalk chalk artwork, which changed as the pandemic progressed. ‘This was when I realized that my daughter’s picture of the world had now forever changed. … I found it amazing that this had become her image of people.’
(Cristina Veloz-Piperni )
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When all the gyms in Winnipeg closed during the first full winter of the pandemic, retiree James Carson said he learned to run outdoors, and shared this selfie from one of his runs in January 2021.
(James Carson)
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Grace Moogk from Point Clark, Ont., shared this photo of her husband on his birthday when the pandemic began. ‘My husband celebrated his 65th birthday at home with no family party,’ she said. ‘I thought this gift of club pack toilet paper, hand sanitizer, masks, wipes and gloves was appropriate!’
(Grace Moogk)
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For David Wowchuk, this image he shared of an empty mall was one of the first realizations he had ‘that this pandemic was real. Everyone was staying home because we were told that we could flatten the curve. We thought it would take two weeks. How wrong we were.’
(Submitted by David Wowchuk)
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Ashley Oberlin shared a selfie of herself and her baby the day a lockdown began in Ottawa on April 8, 2021.
(Ashley Oberlin)
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Jocelyne Bousquet, who is the front shop manager at the local Remedy’s Rx pharmacy in Espanola, Ont., shared a selfie from the first day of the shutdown. ‘Even though I look calm, I was scared as hell. Wearing goggles,’ she said. ‘We had no idea what this virus was, how deadly, how it spreads and here I was, at the door of our business, doors locked and only allowing four customers in at the time.’
(Jocelyne Bousquet)
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Tara Traves in Ottawa says this photo of her child lying on her work desk says it all. ‘For me, the big struggle of the pandemic was working from home while also having our son home doing online learning for weeks at a time,’ she said. ‘This pictures sums up it up for me.’
(Tara Traves)
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Janice Kenney shared a photo of herself on a plane, ‘going to work as a flight attendant, flying all over the world wearing my COVID gear. Gowns, masks, gloves, glasses.’
(Janice Kenney)
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JoAnn McKay shared an image of a game of crokinole with her mother, who moved out of a retirement home to live with her in April 2020 — a ‘smart’ decision the family made. ‘Mom passed away in August 2021, but this picture shows how much fun we had when we lived through the worst of the pandemic.’
(JoAnn McKay)
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Peter Smith shared an image of a truck delivering food to his home in Saanich, B.C.
(Peter Smith)
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Lesley Park shared an image of an empty highway in Toronto on April 19, 2020. ‘We were heading into Toronto to pick up our daughter’s furniture,’ she said. ‘She had been attending university in downtown Toronto.’
(Submitted by Lesley Parker)
Martha Hazell shared an image of words her child wrote on a window at the beginning of the pandemic. The message read, ‘I hope no one gets sick.’
(Martha Hazell)
What’s the future for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments?
Humanity’s ability to ward off the worst outcomes from COVID has improved over the last two years, with a slate of vaccines, personal protections, medications and an ever-evolving treatment plan all playing a role.
But while vaccinations in particular have changed the course of the pandemic — offering high levels of protection against severe diseases — what form they’ll take in the future isn’t set in stone, said Dr. Alexander Wong, an infectious disease physician and clinician-researcher with the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
Health-care workers get ready to administer vaccines at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at the Vancouver Convention Centre in January 2022. Experts say the future of vaccines remains unclear, with multiple new options in development. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Some researchers are developing shots that could potentially target a variety of coronaviruses, not just SARS-CoV-2; other teams are exploring vaccines inhaled through the nose in hopes of curbing infections at the source by targeting the virus’s respiratory entry points.
There are also questions over whether vaccines will be tailored to emerging variants, and how often booster shots might be needed to prevent immunity from waning over time.
Which treatments will become standard going forward is also shifting, with antivirals increasingly part of the equation as research teams race to develop new and better drugs to ward off serious health impacts.
“There are just so many unknowns about what this is going to look like,” Wong said.
Which public health measures work best?
Multiple experts also stressed the importance of figuring out which public health measures worked best — and which ones were a flop — so governments can put in place the best plans to live with this virus in the long term.
That could be particularly crucial given the looming threat of future variants that may be more contagious, more pathogenic or more capable of evading our current vaccines.
“What actually worked to help the bottom line, which was to prevent deaths and hospitalizations? I don’t think we have a good answer to that,” said Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious diseases specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ont.
He said there’s “no doubt” vaccines are important, but that more evidence is needed to understand what role mask-wearing played — particularly since mask mandates across much of the country did little to stop the unprecedented infection rates seen in the Omicron-driven wave.
Show moreVarious countries have started removing all COVID-19 public health restrictions and some provinces are preparing to do the same, but experts say a rushed return to “normal” could backfire. 2:04
Society-wide lockdowns, several experts agreed, were a last-ditch option in the early pandemic that proved not to be a sustainable or successful approach for curbing virus transmission long-term.
“Even if restrictions worked, it protected the laptop class,” said Chakrabarti, who often treated essential workers from local big box stores or factories who were battling COVID.
“If you look at the death rates, during lockdowns, people still died. And the people who died were people who couldn’t work from home or isolate,” said Murthy. “Lockdowns were a public health failure, but we used them as a last resort, because we couldn’t respond in any other way.”
A better approach for the future, he stressed, is a shift in how society strives to curb virus transmission more broadly, by focusing on measures like improving ventilation throughout indoor settings.
“In the 1800s, we sanitized water. In the 1900s, we sanitized streets,” he said. “In the 21st century, are we going to sanitize our air?”
How will health-care systems grapple with COVID-19 going forward?
A burning question for Jason Kindrachuk, a microbiologist with the University of Manitoba, is how health-care systems will function if seasonal waves of COVID wind up layering on top of other respiratory illnesses.
“It’s not like COVID replaced influenza. It did for the last two years, because we were able to keep influenza at bay. But without restrictions, we don’t know the toll on an annual basis,” he said.
“How much of that can we continue to add up before the health-care system can’t care for the people that we’ve traditionally been able to?”
How COVID competes with flu is one thing, and there’s also a pre-existing issue in health care: even before the pandemic hit, hospitals faced a capacity crunch while grappling with high levels of patients, including those who fill beds simply because they’re waiting for spots in retirement homes or long-term care facilities.
“It’s all an interlocking system,” said Chakrabarti. “If one aspect has stress on it, it’s going to affect the whole system.”
Show moreAs the world fights the latest phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian researchers are analyzing hundreds of bat specimens in order to identify new viruses and get a head start on future vaccines. 3:52
How is this virus transmitting between species?
While many scientists are striving to understand the pandemic’s future impact on humans, Sunnybrook’s Mubareka is keeping her focus on animals, since our health is ultimately connected.
A crucial question going forward, she said, is which animals are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infections, and how various species that are already getting infected — like white-tailed deer — are being exposed to the virus.
As part of a team of Canadian scientists, Mubareka recently helped produce preliminary research that outlined the discovery of a heavily mutated lineage of SARS-CoV-2 within Canadian deer populations, and an apparent instance of deer-to-human virus transmission.
But that paper is just the tip of the iceberg, with so much still unknown about how this virus is spreading throughout the animal kingdom.
Dr. Samira Mubareka is shown inside a lab at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in February 2020. (Craig Chivers/CBC)
“We need to understand where coronaviruses are in nature and what the behaviours are that we undertake with zoonotic pathogens that lead to spillover events,” said Kindrachuk. “It’s something we understand somewhat, but we don’t fully know how to mitigate those risks.”
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and researcher with the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, said more research is underway in Canada to answer key questions about this virus’s evolution within animal hosts.
“Are those variants a threat to the human population? We don’t know. Are there threats to animal populations? I mean, that’s something that has huge implications for food security, for the economy, for animal welfare, for the ecology,” she warned.
“So I think that a better understanding of … which animals may actually have SARS-CoV-2 circulating in them already is going to be really crucial going forward for our long-term prospects of controlling [this virus].”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lauren Pelley
Senior Writer
Lauren Pelley is a Senior Writer for CBC News who covers health and medicine, including the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s based in Toronto. Contact her at: lauren.pelley@cbc.ca
Skinstitut Holiday Gift Kits take the stress out of gifting
Toronto, October 31, 2024 – Beauty gifts are at the top of holiday wish lists this year, and Laser Clinics Canada, a leader in advanced beauty treatments and skincare, is taking the pressure out of seasonal shopping. Today, Laser Clincs Canada announces the arrival of its 2024 Holiday Gift Kits, courtesy of Skinstitut, the exclusive skincare line of Laser Clinics Group.
In time for the busy shopping season, the limited-edition Holiday Gifts Kits are available in Laser Clinics locations in the GTA and Ottawa. Clinics are conveniently located in popular shopping centers, including Hillcrest Mall, Square One, CF Sherway Gardens, Scarborough Town Centre, Rideau Centre, Union Station and CF Markville. These limited-edition Kits are available on a first come, first served basis.
“These kits combine our best-selling products, bundled to address the most relevant skin concerns we’re seeing among our clients,” says Christina Ho, Senior Brand & LAM Manager at Laser Clinics Canada. “With several price points available, the kits offer excellent value and suit a variety of gift-giving needs, from those new to cosmeceuticals to those looking to level up their skincare routine. What’s more, these kits are priced with a savings of up to 33 per cent so gift givers can save during the holiday season.
There are two kits to select from, each designed to address key skin concerns and each with a unique theme — Brightening Basics and Hydration Heroes.
Brightening Basics is a mix of everyday essentials for glowing skin for all skin types. The bundle comes in a sleek pink, reusable case and includes three full-sized products: 200ml gentle cleanser, 50ml Moisture Defence (normal skin) and 30ml1% Hyaluronic Complex Serum. The Brightening Basics kit is available at $129, a saving of 33 per cent.
Hydration Heroes is a mix of hydration essentials and active heroes that cater to a wide variety of clients. A perfect stocking stuffer, this bundle includes four deluxe products: Moisture 15 15 ml Defence for normal skin, 10 ml 1% Hyaluronic Complex Serum, 10 ml Retinol Serum and 50 ml Expert Squalane Cleansing Oil. The kit retails at $59.
In addition to the 2024 Holiday Gifts Kits, gift givers can easily add a Laser Clinic Canada gift card to the mix. Offering flexibility, recipients can choose from a wide range of treatments offered by Laser Clinics Canada, or they can expand their collection of exclusive Skinstitut products.
Brightening Basics 2024 Holiday Gift Kit by Skinstitut, available exclusively at Laser Clincs Canada clinics and online at skinstitut.ca.
Hydration Heroes 2024 Holiday Gift Kit by Skinstitut – available exclusively at Laser Clincs Canada clinics and online at skinstitut.ca.
LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.
The Canadian Paediatric Society says doctors should regularly screen children for reading difficulties and dyslexia, calling low literacy a “serious public health concern” that can increase the risk of other problems including anxiety, low self-esteem and behavioural issues, with lifelong consequences.
New guidance issued Wednesday says family doctors, nurses, pediatricians and other medical professionals who care for school-aged kids are in a unique position to help struggling readers access educational and specialty supports, noting that identifying problems early couldhelp kids sooner — when it’s more effective — as well as reveal other possible learning or developmental issues.
The 10 recommendations include regular screening for kids aged four to seven, especially if they belong to groups at higher risk of low literacy, including newcomers to Canada, racialized Canadians and Indigenous Peoples. The society says this can be done in a two-to-three-minute office-based assessment.
Other tips encourage doctors to look for conditions often seen among poor readers such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; to advocate for early literacy training for pediatric and family medicine residents; to liaise with schools on behalf of families seeking help; and to push provincial and territorial education ministries to integrate evidence-based phonics instruction into curriculums, starting in kindergarten.
Dr. Scott McLeod, one of the authors and chair of the society’s mental health and developmental disabilities committee, said a key goal is to catch kids who may be falling through the cracks and to better connect families to resources, including quicker targeted help from schools.
“Collaboration in this area is so key because we need to move away from the silos of: everything educational must exist within the educational portfolio,” McLeod said in an interview from Calgary, where he is a developmental pediatrician at Alberta Children’s Hospital.
“Reading, yes, it’s education, but it’s also health because we know that literacy impacts health. So I think that a statement like this opens the window to say: Yes, parents can come to their health-care provider to get advice, get recommendations, hopefully start a collaboration with school teachers.”
McLeod noted that pediatricians already look for signs of low literacy in young children by way of a commonly used tool known as the Rourke Baby Record, which offers a checklist of key topics, such as nutrition and developmental benchmarks, to cover in a well-child appointment.
But he said questions about reading could be “a standing item” in checkups and he hoped the society’s statement to medical professionals who care for children “enhances their confidence in being a strong advocate for the child” while spurring partnerships with others involved in a child’s life such as teachers and psychologists.
The guidance said pediatricians also play a key role in detecting and monitoring conditions that often coexist with difficulty reading such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but McLeod noted that getting such specific diagnoses typically involves a referral to a specialist, during which time a child continues to struggle.
He also acknowledged that some schools can be slow to act without a specific diagnosis from a specialist, and even then a child may end up on a wait list for school interventions.
“Evidence-based reading instruction shouldn’t have to wait for some of that access to specialized assessments to occur,” he said.
“My hope is that (by) having an existing statement or document written by the Canadian Paediatric Society … we’re able to skip a few steps or have some of the early interventions present,” he said.
McLeod added that obtaining specific assessments from medical specialists is “definitely beneficial and advantageous” to know where a child is at, “but having that sort of clear, thorough assessment shouldn’t be a barrier to intervention starting.”
McLeod said the society was partly spurred to act by 2022’s “Right to Read Inquiry Report” from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which made 157 recommendations to address inequities related to reading instruction in that province.
He called the new guidelines “a big reminder” to pediatric providers, family doctors, school teachers and psychologists of the importance of literacy.
“Early identification of reading difficulty can truly change the trajectory of a child’s life.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.
