Two employees of the Campbellton Regional Hospital have tested positive for COVID-19, Public Health announced Thursday.
The new cases bring the province’s total during the pandemic to 153.
One of the new cases is a person in their 30s, the other is someone in their 40s. The province didn’t say what jobs they hold at the hospital.
“All of the stakeholders at the Campbellton Regional Hospital are mobilized to ensure that everything is in place to provide quality care and ensure the safety of patients and staff,” said Gilles Lanteigne, chief executive officer of Vitalité Health Network.
“Our processes are in place, our staff are trained and have the personal protective equipment they need to do their jobs. I am confident that we will get through these difficult times.”
Three people in the Campbellton region have recovered from the respiratory illness, keeping the total number of active cases in New Brunswick at 29, including two in Moncton.
The first in a cluster of cases was reported May 21 in the Campbellton region, also known as Zone 5, after a doctor travelled to Quebec for personal reasons and did not self-isolate after returning home to the area. Many of the cases have been found at Manoir de la Vallée, a long-term care facility in Atholville.
One resident of the Manoir has died. Five people from the region are in hospital, one of them in intensive care.
Two staff members at the Campbellton Regional Hospital have been diagnosed with COVID-19. (Shane Fowler/CBC)
“This is an evolving situation at the Campbellton Regional Hospital and everyone must watch for symptoms since COVID-19 is going to be with us for a long time,” said Dr. Jennifer Russell, chief medical officer of health, said in the news release announcing the new cases.
As of Thursday, 35,753 tests have been conducted for COVID-19 in the province.
139 prosecutions under state of emergency
The province is extending its state of emergency for another two weeks after being implemented almost three months ago.
As of June 8, there have been 139 prosecutions, including both tickets and charges for non-compliance under the current state of emergency.
Public Safety Minister Carl Urquhart “signs” the declaration implementing the Emergency Measures Act. But some noted the document in the photo was not the one uploaded to the province’s website. (Louis Léger’s Facebook)
“A peace officer may issue a fine in the amount of $240 plus surcharge and fees,” said Geoffrey Downey, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety.
“In instances where an offence is brought to court, in certain circumstances a judge may issue a fine to an amount not exceeding $10,200 plus surcharge and fees.”
Temporary foreign worker was travelling with 158 others
A temporary worker who tested positive for COVID-19 in the Moncton area earlier this week was travelling on a charter plane with a total of 158 people, Premier Blaine Higgs said Thursday.
The worker is self-isolating but did visit “three different locations,” Higgs said during question period.
Following an outbreak among migrant workers in British Columbia, employers in New Brunswick are required to have a COVID-19 operational plan in place, which assures workers arriving to New Brunswick have appropriate accommodations before and after self-isolation, proper food, access to health insurance, along with proper cleaning and disinfection of their work space.
“All contact tracing will be identified, including any exposure to [the] outside, which we believe there isn’t any because those are the rules,” he said.
Premier Blaine Higgs sporting his ‘Stepping up for my New Brunswick’ T-shirt last month to encourage more New Brunswickers to apply for jobs in the farming and aquaculture sectors after banning temporary foreign workers from entering the province to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (Government of New Brunswick/Submitted)
Temporary foreign workers were banned from the province April 28 as part of efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The move brought criticism from farmers and fish-plant operators who rely on the workers.
The province allowed the workers into the province at the end of May because not enough New Brunswickers applied to fill in at plants and on farms.
Higgs said about 430 new temporary foreign workers have arrived since the pandemic reached New Brunswick.
Average of 62 vehicles turned away daily at New Brunswick borders
Since March 25,an average of 57 vehicles have been turned away from New Brunswick borders each day. On Tuesday, 62 vehicles were turned away.
A border checkpoint on Route 120 between New Brunswick and Quebec. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
“The numbers are smaller on weekends than weekdays,” Department of Public Safety spokesperson Geoffrey Downey, said in an emailed statement to CBC News.
The number of vehicles arriving has more or less steadily increased since March 25, and so have the number of refusals.”
He also said an average of 287 people are ordered to self-isolate daily.
Court of Queen’s Bench moves to church in Woodstock
The Court of Queen’s Bench in Woodstock has temporarily moved all cases to the Woodstock Baptist Church.
This is to accommodate spacing requirements needed to hold jury selections and trials. In a news release, the province said it will also ensure “the continuity of all Court of Queen’s Bench matters, including family court hearings.”
“As a result of not being able to safely — within the COVID parameters — host a lot of the ongoings within courts, mainly the jury piece, we were forced to look elsewhere for a suitable facility so as to ensure the wheels of justice … continue to turn,” said Ross Gorman, regional director of court services for the south district.
The Court of Queen’s Bench has temporarily moved into the Woodstock Baptist Church to observe physical distancing, particularly for events like jury selection. (Gary Moore/CBC News)
All matters involving the Court of Queen’s Bench will take place in the church’s gymnasium until the end of the year.
The church is located directly across the street from Woodstock’s Justice Building.
Provincial court matters will continue to be held at Woodstock’s justice building.
Red Cross tries to help seniors feel less isolated
The Red Cross is starting a program to help seniors feel less isolated during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Friendly Calls program will see isolated seniors matched with volunteers from the Red Cross.
Volunteers will regularly call seniors to check in and talk. The goal is to reduce feelings of isolation in a group that is particularly at risk of COVID-19 and who might already have felt isolated.
“It’s just someone to talk to for those folks who have no one to talk to,” said Bill Lawlor, provincial director of the Red Cross.
“They don’t have family around, at least in the Atlantic provinces. Or they don’t have family at all. No one to provide that type of support.”
Seniors or their families can call the Red Cross and go through a short introductory interview to make sure they’re a good fit for the program.
After that, seniors are matched with a volunteer.
“We find a volunteer who can meet the schedule, try to see if we can meet some similar personality traits as much as possible, and then we’ll give it a trial run,” said Lawlor.
“If it continues to work well then they’ll just carry on … if not, that’s ok. We can switch out.”
Provincial Red Cross director Bill Lawlor said the new Red Cross program will help seniors feel less isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Shane Fowler/CBC)
While the goal of the program is to ease feelings of isolation, Lawlor said similar programs in the past have helped in other ways, such as detecting early stages of memory loss.
“In the course of a conversation, you can start to pick up things that might suggest that someone is not feeling well, but they haven’t made an appointment with their physician,” said Lawlor.
Lawlor doesn’t have concrete numbers for how many volunteers are needed but is urging anyone interested to call the Red Cross.
He also urges family and friends to talk to seniors about joining the program, particularly those who are shy.
“There’s those folks who could really benefit from this interaction who you know they won’t call,” said Lawlor.
“They don’t feel they will benefit from it even though clearly they could.”
New Brunswickers encouraged to renew licences
The province is urging people to renew licences, registrations, certificates and permits that had their expiration dates extended until the end of June due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Waiting until the end of June could cause delays, particularly for driver’s licences, which take two weeks to process and be mailed out.
The province said Service New Brunswick has been increasing the number of services it offers online and through Teleservices, especially for some of its most requested renewals, such as driver’s licences.
“Online and Teleservices are the most accessible, safe and convenient service methods,” said Service New Brunswick Minister Sherry Wilson in a news release.
“Based upon the significant increase in these methods, we believe New Brunswickers are embracing them.”
Twelve centres offer in-person services, by appointment only, for things that cannot be completed online or through Teleservices.
City of Saint John looking at ways to recover financially
The City of Saint John’s COVID-19 economic recovery team has been looking to residents and businesses for ideas on how it can financial recover from the virus.
With major gatherings put on hold and the cancelling of the city’s lucrative cruise ship season, there’s no end in sight for the port city.
“What they’re trying to do is utilize the city’s assets, facilities, programs, investments to accelerate that economic and community recovery,” said Phil Ouellette, the deputy commissioner of growth and community development services.
“More specifically, one of the things that we are seeking to do is to increase people traffic in these commercial districts of the city, where those businesses that have been so hard hit by COVID-19 are located.”
Any move to bring more business into the uptown will inevitably have to adhere to physical distancing rules, which means the city may have to get creative when drawing in more tourists.
Saint John Mayor Don Darling said it’s also important to be aware of the many New Brunswickers who have lost their jobs or have been hit financially by the pandemic.
“I’m having a lot of conversation myself with small, medium-sized business owners, large business owners, to try to understand where are we?, Darling said. “And what are the crowds like? And what is recovery looking like in the early days?”
What to do if you have symptoms
People concerned they might have COVID-19 can take a self-assessment on the government website at gnb.ca.
Public Health says symptoms shown by people with COVID-19 have included: a fever above 38 C, a new cough or worsening chronic cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, new onset of fatigue, new onset of muscle pain, diarrhea, loss of sense of taste or smell, and difficulty breathing. In children, symptoms have also included purple markings on the fingers and toes.
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
