As a Halifax-area woman becomes the 59th Nova Scotian to die with COVID-19, the premier hints all businesses will be allowed to reopen in “early June” - Halifax Examiner | Canada News Media
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As a Halifax-area woman becomes the 59th Nova Scotian to die with COVID-19, the premier hints all businesses will be allowed to reopen in “early June” – Halifax Examiner

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Premier Stephen McNeil and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang at the COVID-19 briefing, Tuesday, May 26, 2020. Photo: Communications Nova Scotia

The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free.

A woman in her 80s who had an underlying medical condition has died after contracting the COVID-19 virus. She was a resident of the HRM but not a resident of Northwood or any other long-term care home.

The news came at today’s daily briefing by Dr. Robert Strang, the Province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, and Premier Stephen McNeil. Two new cases of COVID-19 were reported, at least one at Northwood, where there remain 15 active cases among staff and residents. The latest case involved a worker and Strang acknowledges Northwood is still in “outbreak” mode; 52 of the 59 COVID-related deaths in Nova Scotia were residents of Northwood.

Seven Nova Scotians with the virus are currently in hospital, three of those in ICU. Nine hundred and seventy-six people have now recovered; a total of 1,052 people tested positive. The lab did over 500 tests yesterday and the premier claims on a per capita basis, Nova Scotia is doing the second-highest number of tests among all provinces.

McNeil says he will tell Nova Scotians later this week when businesses ordered to shut down because of COVID-19 will be permitted to reopen.  He said licensed daycares are “on track” to resume operations June 8. The premier hinted the opening date for all businesses will be “sometime in early June.” Meanwhile, he announced a new government website called “Preparing to Reopen Nova Scotia.”  This “how to” website will contain information and guidelines to permit safe physical distancing for numerous types of businesses, including gyms, restaurants, barber shops, physio clinics, dental offices, and others.

“I know we are moving more slowly than other provinces but as Dr. Strang and I have said, this is not a race,” said McNeil. “Other provinces have opened parts of their economy and have either had to close up again or delay the rest of their opening plan because their cases of COVID continued to rise. We may end up with a similar problem but it won’t be because we went too fast, too soon…the last thing I want to do is to have to close down our economy again because we rushed to reopen. We will follow the advice of Public Health.”

Reporters asked Strang when nursing homes in the province — which have been closed to family visitors since March 8 — could be allowed to let residents share an outdoor visit with a family member at a two-meter distance. Temperatures are expected to soar to the high 20s over the next few days. It has been several weeks since any home other than Northwood and one unnamed facility has reported a single case of the virus.

Family members of long-term care residents have expressed concerns residents could be losing the will to live unless some type of personal contact can be restored. Strang responded by saying he had “begun” discussions this morning with the Department of Health and Wellness which is responsible for monitoring nursing homes.

“It would be premature to guess at where we are going to land in terms of a timeframe,” said Dr.Strang. “Fully recognizing the importance of the social interaction for residents in connection with their families. Knowing at the same time we have to maintain a high level of vigilance and safety to protect these people. We need to think our way through this, carefully, so that we balance the different risks.”


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Whooping cough is at a decade-high level in US

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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.

The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.

Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.

Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.

“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.

But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.

That includes his own teenage daughter.

“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.

It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.

“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”

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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Scientists show how sperm and egg come together like a key in a lock

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How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.

New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.

“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.

The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.

Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.

It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.

Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.

Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.

The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.

The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.

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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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