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What's known, unknown about the coronavirus variant in Britain – CBC.ca

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A new variant of the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is spreading in Britain and prompting high levels of concern, especially among the country’s European neighbours, some of which have cut transport links.

The variant, referred to by some experts as the B.1.1.7 lineage, is not the first new variant of the pandemic virus to emerge, but is said to be up to 70 per cent more transmissible than the previously dominant strain in the United Kingdom, based on modelling.

Virus mutations seen so far

In April, researchers in Sweden found a virus with two genetic changes that seemed to make it roughly two times more infectious, said Dr. Ravi Gupta, who studies viruses at the University of Cambridge in England. About 6,000 cases worldwide have been reported, mostly in Denmark and England.

Several variations of that strain now have turned up. Some were reported in people who got them from mink farms in Denmark. A new South African strain has the two changes seen before, plus some others.

Britain’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said on Saturday he thought the new variant might have started in the U.K.

Britain’s European neighbours began closing their doors to travellers from the United Kingdom on various modes of transportation, including rail travel, amid concern about a rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

The cause for concern

Jason Kindrachuk, Canada Research Chair in molecular pathogenesis of emerging and re-emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said a variant is a variation in a circulating strain of the virus that’s broadly spread over large communities rather than localized.

In this case, the new variant has rapidly become the dominant one in cases of COVID-19 in parts of southern England, and has been linked to an increase in hospitalization rates, especially in London and in the adjacent county of Kent.

While it was first seen in Britain in September, by the week of Dec. 9 in London, 62 per cent of COVID-19 cases were a result of the new variant. That compared to 28 per cent of cases three weeks earlier.

The governments of Australia, Italy and the Netherlands said they had detected cases of the new variant. It was identified in the Netherlands in early December.

WATCH l WHO addresses new variants detected in U.K.:

World Health Organization technical lead Dr. Maria Van Kherkove says U.K. researchers studying the coronavirus variant are focusing on transmissibilty, severity and antibody response. She said they’re trying to determine if the apparent higher transmissibility rate is from the virus or people’s behaviour. 1:51

Iceland and Denmark have also reported a few cases of COVID-19 with the new variant to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Europe’s disease monitoring agency. Media reports in Belgium say cases have also been detected there.

“It is right to take it seriously,” said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London.

What scientists are watching

The main worry is that the variant seems to be more transmissible than the original. It has 23 mutations in its genetic code — a relatively high number of changes — and some of these could be affecting its ability to spread.

“We’re trying to figure out what the consequences are in real time,” Kindrachuk said

He said the potential consequences scientists are looking for include:

  • What are the biological consequences?
  • What does this mean for vaccine efficacy?
  • What does this mean for immune responses?
  • What does this mean for transmission?

Some of the mutations are on the spiky protein that the virus uses to attach to and infect cells. That spike is what current vaccines target.

“I’m worried about this, for sure,” said Gupta, adding it’s too soon to know how important it ultimately will prove to be.

Scientists estimate the variant is about 40 to 70 per cent more transmissible. The U.K. government said on Saturday it could increase the reproduction R rate by 0.4, from 1.1 to 1.5.

This means it is spreading faster in Britain, making the pandemic there even harder to control and increasing the risk that it will also spread swiftly in other countries.

“The new B.1.1.7 … still appears to have all the human lethality that the original had, but with an increased ability to transmit,” said Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Kindrachuk suggested waiting for the “full slate of the data” to see if it points in the direction of increased transmission or not. 

There is cause for concern when a virus mutates by changing the proteins on its surface because those changes might help it escape from vaccines, drugs or the immune system.

“Emerging evidence” suggests that may be starting to happen with the new coronavirus, Trevor Bedford, a biologist and genetics expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, wrote on Twitter.

“We’ve now seen the emergence and spread of several variants” that suggest this, he said, noting that some show resistance to antibody treatments.

There is no evidence the mutated variant of the virus increases the severity of the disease, although it is more transmissible, officials with the World Health Organization said on Monday, citing U.K. analysis.
 
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead for COVID-19, said scientists are looking at the body’s antibody response to the virus and she expects results in the coming days and weeks.

Will the current vaccines offer protection?

Scientists say there’s no evidence that the vaccines being deployed in the U.K. — made by Pfizer-BioNTech — or other COVID-19 shots in development will not protect against this variant.

“It’s unlikely that this will have anything more than a minor, if any, effect on the vaccine’s effectiveness,” said Adam Finn, a vaccine specialist and professor of pediatrics at Bristol University.

“We are not seeing … any gross changes in the spike protein that will reduce vaccine effectiveness so far,” said Julian Tang, professor and clinical virologist at Leicester University.

U.S president-elect Joe Biden’s surgeon general nominee, Vivek Murthy, said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press that there’s “no reason to believe that the vaccines that have been developed will not be effective against this virus as well.”

Vaccines produce wide-ranging responses by the immune system beyond just those to the spike protein, several experts noted. The possibility that new strains will be resistant to existing vaccines are low, but not “inexistent,” Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser for the U.S. government’s vaccine distribution effort, said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“Up to now, I don’t think there has been a single variant that would be resistant,” said Slaoui. “This particular variant in the U.K., I think, is very unlikely to have escaped the vaccine immunity.”

Will current COVID-19 tests detect the new variant?

One of the mutations in the new variant affects one of three genomic targets used by some PCR tests. This means that in those tests, that target area, or “channel,” would come up negative.

“This has affected the ability of some tests to detect the virus,” said Robert Shorten, an expert in microbiology at the Association for Clinical Biochemistry & Laboratory Medicine.

Since PCR tests generally detect more than one gene target, however, a mutation in the spike protein only partly affects the test, reducing that risk of false negative results.

Are Canadian scientists on the lookout for the new variant?

Researchers are doing genome sequencing work on the coronavirus in Canada.

“We haven’t seen anything that’s overtaken the current circulating strain here in Canada,” Kindrachuk said.

To be cautious, he said scientists are checking for the variant in people who’ve recently travelled from the U.K.

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Health Canada approves updated Moderna COVID-19 vaccine

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TORONTO – Health Canada has authorized Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine that protects against currently circulating variants of the virus.

The mRNA vaccine, called Spikevax, has been reformulated to target the KP.2 subvariant of Omicron.

It will replace the previous version of the vaccine that was released a year ago, which targeted the XBB.1.5 subvariant of Omicron.

Health Canada recently asked provinces and territories to get rid of their older COVID-19 vaccines to ensure the most current vaccine will be used during this fall’s respiratory virus season.

Health Canada is also reviewing two other updated COVID-19 vaccines but has not yet authorized them.

They are Pfizer’s Comirnaty, which is also an mRNA vaccine, as well as Novavax’s protein-based vaccine.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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These people say they got listeria after drinking recalled plant-based milks

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TORONTO – Sanniah Jabeen holds a sonogram of the unborn baby she lost after contracting listeria last December. Beneath, it says “love at first sight.”

Jabeen says she believes she and her baby were poisoned by a listeria outbreak linked to some plant-based milks and wants answers. An investigation continues into the recall declared July 8 of several Silk and Great Value plant-based beverages.

“I don’t even have the words. I’m still processing that,” Jabeen says of her loss. She was 18 weeks pregnant when she went into preterm labour.

The first infection linked to the recall was traced back to August 2023. One year later on Aug. 12, 2024, the Public Health Agency of Canada said three people had died and 20 were infected.

The number of cases is likely much higher, says Lawrence Goodridge, Canada Research Chair in foodborne pathogen dynamics at the University of Guelph: “For every person known, generally speaking, there’s typically 20 to 25 or maybe 30 people that are unknown.”

The case count has remained unchanged over the last month, but the Public Health Agency of Canada says it won’t declare the outbreak over until early October because of listeria’s 70-day incubation period and the reporting delays that accompany it.

Danone Canada’s head of communications said in an email Wednesday that the company is still investigating the “root cause” of the outbreak, which has been linked to a production line at a Pickering, Ont., packaging facility.

Pregnant people, adults over 60, and those with weakened immune systems are most at risk of becoming sick with severe listeriosis. If the infection spreads to an unborn baby, Health Canada says it can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth or life-threatening illness in a newborn.

The Canadian Press spoke to 10 people, from the parents of a toddler to an 89-year-old senior, who say they became sick with listeria after drinking from cartons of plant-based milk stamped with the recalled product code. Here’s a look at some of their experiences.

Sanniah Jabeen, 32, Toronto

Jabeen says she regularly drank Silk oat and almond milk in smoothies while pregnant, and began vomiting seven times a day and shivering at night in December 2023. She had “the worst headache of (her) life” when she went to the emergency room on Dec. 15.

“I just wasn’t functioning like a normal human being,” Jabeen says.

Told she was dehydrated, Jabeen was given fluids and a blood test and sent home. Four days later, she returned to hospital.

“They told me that since you’re 18 weeks, there’s nothing you can do to save your baby,” says Jabeen, who moved to Toronto from Pakistan five years ago.

Jabeen later learned she had listeriosis and an autopsy revealed her baby was infected, too.

“It broke my heart to read that report because I was just imagining my baby drinking poisoned amniotic fluid inside of me. The womb is a place where your baby is supposed to be the safest,” Jabeen said.

Jabeen’s case is likely not included in PHAC’s count. Jabeen says she was called by Health Canada and asked what dairy and fresh produce she ate – foods more commonly associated with listeria – but not asked about plant-based beverages.

She’s pregnant again, and is due in several months. At first, she was scared to eat, not knowing what caused the infection during her last pregnancy.

“Ever since I learned about the almond, oat milk situation, I’ve been feeling a bit better knowing that it wasn’t something that I did. It was something else that caused it. It wasn’t my fault,” Jabeen said.

She’s since joined a proposed class action lawsuit launched by LPC Avocates against the manufacturers and sellers of Silk and Great Value plant-based beverages. The lawsuit has not yet been certified by a judge.

Natalie Grant and her seven year-old daughter, Bowmanville, Ont.

Natalie Grant says she was in a hospital waiting room when she saw a television news report about the recall. She wondered if the dark chocolate almond milk her daughter drank daily was contaminated.

She had brought the girl to hospital because she was vomiting every half hour, constantly on the toilet with diarrhea, and had severe pain in her abdomen.

“I’m definitely thinking that this is a pretty solid chance that she’s got listeria at this point because I knew she had all the symptoms,” Grant says of seeing the news report.

Once her daughter could hold fluids, they went home and Grant cross-checked the recalled product code – 7825 – with the one on her carton. They matched.

“I called the emerg and I said I’m pretty confident she’s been exposed,” Grant said. She was told to return to the hospital if her daughter’s symptoms worsened. An hour and a half later, her fever spiked, the vomiting returned, her face flushed and her energy plummeted.

Grant says they were sent to a hospital in Ajax, Ont. and stayed two weeks while her daughter received antibiotics four times a day until she was discharged July 23.

“Knowing that my little one was just so affected and how it affected us as a family alone, there’s a bitterness left behind,” Grant said. She’s also joined the proposed class action.

Thelma Feldman, 89, Toronto

Thelma Feldman says she regularly taught yoga to friends in her condo building before getting sickened by listeria on July 2. Now, she has a walker and her body aches. She has headaches and digestive problems.

“I’m kind of depressed,” she says.

“It’s caused me a lot of physical and emotional pain.”

Much of the early days of her illness are a blur. She knows she boarded an ambulance with profuse diarrhea on July 2 and spent five days at North York General Hospital. Afterwards, she remembers Health Canada officials entering her apartment and removing Silk almond milk from her fridge, and volunteers from a community organization giving her sponge baths.

“At my age, 89, I’m not a kid anymore and healing takes longer,” Feldman says.

“I don’t even feel like being with people. I just sit at home.”

Jasmine Jiles and three-year-old Max, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, Que.

Jasmine Jiles says her three-year-old son Max came down with flu-like symptoms and cradled his ears in what she interpreted as a sign of pain, like the one pounding in her own head, around early July.

When Jiles heard about the recall soon after, she called Danone Canada, the plant-based milk manufacturer, to find out if their Silk coconut milk was in the contaminated batch. It was, she says.

“My son is very small, he’s very young, so I asked what we do in terms of overall monitoring and she said someone from the company would get in touch within 24 to 48 hours,” Jiles says from a First Nations reserve near Montreal.

“I never got a call back. I never got an email”

At home, her son’s fever broke after three days, but gas pains stuck with him, she says. It took a couple weeks for him to get back to normal.

“In hindsight, I should have taken him (to the hospital) but we just tried to see if we could nurse him at home because wait times are pretty extreme,” Jiles says, “and I don’t have child care at the moment.”

Joseph Desmond, 50, Sydney, N.S.

Joseph Desmond says he suffered a seizure and fell off his sofa on July 9. He went to the emergency room, where they ran an electroencephalogram (EEG) test, and then returned home. Within hours, he had a second seizure and went back to hospital.

His third seizure happened the next morning while walking to the nurse’s station.

In severe cases of listeriosis, bacteria can spread to the central nervous system and cause seizures, according to Health Canada.

“The last two months have really been a nightmare,” says Desmond, who has joined the proposed lawsuit.

When he returned home from the hospital, his daughter took a carton of Silk dark chocolate almond milk out of the fridge and asked if he had heard about the recall. By that point, Desmond says he was on his second two-litre carton after finishing the first in June.

“It was pretty scary. Terrifying. I honestly thought I was going to die.”

Cheryl McCombe, 63, Haliburton, Ont.

The morning after suffering a second episode of vomiting, feverish sweats and diarrhea in the middle of the night in early July, Cheryl McCombe scrolled through the news on her phone and came across the recall.

A few years earlier, McCombe says she started drinking plant-based milks because it seemed like a healthier choice to splash in her morning coffee. On June 30, she bought two cartons of Silk cashew almond milk.

“It was on the (recall) list. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I got listeria,’” McCombe says. She called her doctor’s office and visited an urgent care clinic hoping to get tested and confirm her suspicion, but she says, “I was basically shut down at the door.”

Public Health Ontario does not recommend listeria testing for infected individuals with mild symptoms unless they are at risk of developing severe illness, such as people who are immunocompromised, elderly, pregnant or newborn.

“No wonder they couldn’t connect the dots,” she adds, referencing that it took close to a year for public health officials to find the source of the outbreak.

“I am a woman in my 60s and sometimes these signs are of, you know, when you’re vomiting and things like that, it can be a sign in women of a bigger issue,” McCombe says. She was seeking confirmation that wasn’t the case.

Disappointed, with her stomach still feeling off, she says she decided to boost her gut health with probiotics. After a couple weeks she started to feel like herself.

But since then, McCombe says, “I’m back on Kawartha Dairy cream in my coffee.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

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B.C. mayors seek ‘immediate action’ from federal government on mental health crisis

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VANCOUVER – Mayors and other leaders from several British Columbia communities say the provincial and federal governments need to take “immediate action” to tackle mental health and public safety issues that have reached crisis levels.

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says it’s become “abundantly clear” that mental health and addiction issues and public safety have caused crises that are “gripping” Vancouver, and he and other politicians, First Nations leaders and law enforcement officials are pleading for federal and provincial help.

In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier David Eby, mayors say there are “three critical fronts” that require action including “mandatory care” for people with severe mental health and addiction issues.

The letter says senior governments also need to bring in “meaningful bail reform” for repeat offenders, and the federal government must improve policing at Metro Vancouver ports to stop illicit drugs from coming in and stolen vehicles from being exported.

Sim says the “current system” has failed British Columbians, and the number of people dealing with severe mental health and addiction issues due to lack of proper care has “reached a critical point.”

Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer says repeat violent offenders are too often released on bail due to a “revolving door of justice,” and a new approach is needed to deal with mentally ill people who “pose a serious and immediate danger to themselves and others.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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