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Local health officials warned Friday that Windsor-Essex is at the precipice of a seventh COVID-19 wave, with a new strain that is highly contagious and easily re-infects its victims.
Local health officials warned Friday that Windsor-Essex is at the precipice of a seventh COVID-19 wave, with a new strain that is highly contagious and easily re-infects its victims.
“It seems to have an ability to evade the immune system,” said Dr. Wassim Saad, chief of staff at Windsor Regional Hospital. “There have been case reports of patients acquiring this variant twice within a month, which is something we did not see with any previous variant.
“Previously, if you had an infection you felt relatively protected because your immune system was going to protect you for at least a few months and sometimes up to six months. That is absolutely not the case with this variant.”
Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer, told the Canadian Press this week that the province is officially in a seventh wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The province is set to make a decision next week about potentially expanding the eligibility for fourth doses of the vaccine, he said.
The culprit is an Omicron subvariant called BA.5, which is quickly becoming the dominant strain of the virus.
“I think it’s generally accepted that BA.5 is going to have a higher burden of disease,” said Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, acting medical officer of health with the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit.
Saad said the Windsor region generally lags behind Toronto and other larger regions in Ontario by a couple weeks, so the worst of this wave is likely yet to come. Nesathurai said it’s possible the new wave could continue to swell through the summer.
“We’re going to see increased disease activity in the near and intermediate term,” he said. “I am concerned about persistent disease activity in the fall as we have more people being indoors.”
The pandemic is not over
The concern is that, while BA.5 infections do not appear to be more severe than previous variants, more people are likely to become infected. That could lead to more hospitalizations for the elderly and people with other health issues.
Windsor Regional Hospital is already short on beds and dealing with an overburdened emergency room, where the wait time for a first assessment by a doctor often stretches beyond five hours.
Saad said the hospital had to halt elective surgeries for a couple days this week because of a bed shortage.
“It shows you that we’re teetering right on the edge,” he said. “There’s not a lot of flexibility in the system and we don’t have a lot of capacity. Any added strain on the system is going to hurt it.
“It’s one of those things where we always talk about being close to a breaking point. But if this seventh wave is a significant one, knowing that we’re going into the summer months at or above capacity, it could be devastating for our ability to deliver safe and adequate health care in our region.”
Nesathurai said it’s time for renewed vigilance.
“We have to change our strategy,” he said. “Part of that is when we have higher disease activity we should have a greater number of public health restrictions.”
The health unit still recommends that people wear masks indoors where they’re out of their own homes. Nesathurai added that only 35 per cent of people in Windsor-Essex are caught up on their vaccinations. The recommended number of doses and boosters varies depending on age and health status.
“I think the fact that we have only 35 per cent of people who are up-to-date on their vaccinations concerns us that perhaps as a community we could be more vigilant in trying to manage COVID-19,” said Nesathurai.
“The pandemic is not over.”
Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
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Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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