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Canada begins vaccinating inmates in federal prisons with no active coronavirus cases – Global News

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The first 40 federal inmates to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus in Canada were given their inoculations inside facilities without any active cases, Global News has learned.

That’s despite a number of prisons seeing outbreaks that have led to conditions that advocates call inhumane, while others also wonder why correctional officers aren’t being prioritized.

The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) began its vaccination pilot program for prisons Friday, with four federal institutions set to administer a combined 1,200 doses of Moderna’s vaccine in the coming days — enough to eventually inoculate 600 inmates.

Read more:
Federal inmates to start receiving coronavirus vaccinations this week, union says

Only one of those facilities, the Drummond Institution in Drummondville, Que., has ever seen any COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, and all 19 cases have already recovered. Vaccine doses were also delivered this week to the Regional Treatment Centre in Millhaven, Ont.; the Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia; and the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, Sask., none of which have seen a single infection to date.

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The CSC said the facilities were chosen for the initial round of vaccinations because they’re home to inmates deemed priorities for receiving the vaccine — namely the elderly and medically vulnerable.


Click to play video 'Managing COVID-19 in correctional facilities '



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Managing COVID-19 in correctional facilities 


Managing COVID-19 in correctional facilities 

But that doesn’t sit well with Sherri Maier, a prisoner advocate who has a loved one serving a life sentence at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary. The prison is currently battling the largest COVID-19 outbreak in the country, with 72 active cases as of Thursday.

With no vaccine, inmates there are being confined to their cells 23-and-a-half hours per day.

“Some guys are choosing to ‘bird bath,’ as they call it, in their cells, in their sink as opposed to showering so they can call their family,” she told Global News. “It’s inhumane.”

Prisons in Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario are also currently seeing outbreaks, which also broke out in facilities in those provinces and others earlier in the pandemic. To date, three inmates have died and nearly 1,200 have been infected.

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Read more:
Inmates in Canadian prisons should get speedy access to coronavirus vaccine: advocates 

The CSC said vaccines will be distributed to other facilities “soon,” but could not say exactly when those deliveries would be made.

Maier and other advocates have pointed out that inmates are particularly vulnerable to a fast-spreading virus like COVID-19, and have spent months calling for them to be prioritized for the vaccine — regardless of age or condition.

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“They’re still people, they still have rights and they still deserve to be protected in there,” Maier said. “Because they’re in such a confined space, they’re more vulnerable than most people.”


Click to play video 'Coronavirus: 10 inmates at Sask. Regional Psychiatric Centre receive vaccine'



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Coronavirus: 10 inmates at Sask. Regional Psychiatric Centre receive vaccine


Coronavirus: 10 inmates at Sask. Regional Psychiatric Centre receive vaccine

Should prisoners be prioritized?

The CSC and other government officials have defended the prison vaccination program, saying they are following the advice laid out by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization that says the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions should be prioritized.

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“When someone becomes seriously ill in our federal institutions, they don’t receive treatment within the institution,” Public Safety Minister Bill Blair explained at a press conference Wednesday. “They take up an ICU bed in a hospital in the local community.

“Therefore, it’s very important that we deal with those individuals at greatest risk of getting COVID and at greatest risk of having serious health consequences as a result.”

Read more:
Millhaven among prisons to administer first COVID-19 vaccines to inmates

He noted the advisory committee has identified congregate living locations as high-risk areas for the coronavirus, which would include prisons as well as long-term care homes.

But Conservative politicians have been vocal in their opposition to inmates being prioritized. Opposition Leader Erin O’Toole wrote on Twitter Tuesday: “Not one criminal should be vaccinated ahead of any vulnerable Canadian or front-line health worker.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Wednesday said he “couldn’t believe it” when he heard about the program, and urged the federal government to “stop it.”

“Let’s not give the most dangerous criminals in our country the vaccine before we give it to give it to our long term care patients, the most vulnerable and other elderly people,” he told reporters.

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Click to play video 'Coronavirus: Ford rails against reports federal inmates will receive COVID-19 vaccines starting Friday'



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Coronavirus: Ford rails against reports federal inmates will receive COVID-19 vaccines starting Friday


Coronavirus: Ford rails against reports federal inmates will receive COVID-19 vaccines starting Friday

Blair criticized O’Toole’s and Ford’s comments, saying “frankly, the language of resentment and fear really has no place in this discussion.”

Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs told Global News Friday that her party was only concerned that vulnerable populations like long-term care residents and health-care workers might miss out on doses if inmates are further prioritized.

“In the reality of limited supply, of scarce supply, what we are saying is that those people should be put ahead of incarcerated inmates,” she said.

Over 261,000 Canadians have received their first dose of the vaccine, according to the COVID-19 Tracker Canada, which takes its data from government sources. The site says that number represents just under half of the 545,000 doses delivered to date.


Click to play video 'Elderly and at-risk inmates to receive COVID-19 vaccine on Friday'



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Elderly and at-risk inmates to receive COVID-19 vaccine on Friday


Elderly and at-risk inmates to receive COVID-19 vaccine on Friday

What about correctional officers?

Stubbs added that if inmates are to continue getting vaccinated, “at the very least” the program should also put correctional officers and employees at the front of the line as well.

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But the CSC said it will be the provinces who will be in charge of determining how those employees are prioritized, “as with all health care.”

“We have been working closely with Provinces to identify our health care and frontline workers for prioritization and some health care staff have already been vaccinated,” a spokesperson said.

Read more:
Inmates stage hunger strike, call for Saskatchewan corrections minister’s resignation

Jeff Wilkins, president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, said that doesn’t make sense.

“We don’t want to rely on what the different provinces are doing,” he said. “We’re federal government employees, and the federal government should be looking after us.

“It’s something our members are begging for right now.”

The union has in the past complained about miscommunication from the CSC and a slow rollout of personal protective equipment to its members back in the spring, when the virus made its way into several federal and provincial prisons. The CSC has denied the union’s allegations.


Click to play video 'Inmates stage hunger strike, call for Saskatchewan corrections minister’s resignation'



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Inmates stage hunger strike, call for Saskatchewan corrections minister’s resignation


Inmates stage hunger strike, call for Saskatchewan corrections minister’s resignation

Now that a vaccine has arrived, Wilkins says his members are once again being left behind.

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“It just doesn’t make sense to me (that) our members are walking into this disease every day and they’re not being provided protection for it,” he said.

“The quicker we can get everybody vaccinated in institutions, inmates included, the better off we’ll be.”

Blair said Wednesday he understands the union’s concerns and said correctional officers will be prioritized, but added those with “acute” needs will still be front of the line — including inmates.

“We have a duty of care for those who are in our custody to ensure that they are treated fairly and that they are kept safe,” he said. “And I think that’s also very much in the interest of those correction workers who are in those institutions.”

© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”

More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.

Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.

The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.

However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.

Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.

“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.

What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.

In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.

Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.

Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.

Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.

Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.

Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)

There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.

“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa showed telltale warning signs before erupting in 2022

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.

That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.

Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.

“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.

Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.

When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.

The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.

The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.

Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.

Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.

Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.

(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Waymo’s robotaxis now open to anyone who wants a driverless ride in Los Angeles

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Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.

The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.

After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.

Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.

Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.

“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.

Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.

But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.

Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.

Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.

That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.

Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.

Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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