Canada’s most populous provinces are facing staff shortages in health care and long-term care as Canada continues to face record-breaking COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations related to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé says the health-care system is missing about 20,000 workers who have been infected with or exposed to the virus and said the government is working with unions to find more staff to care for about 2,500 COVID-19 patients.
Health officials in the province are reporting another 1,953 COVID-19 hospitalizations, a rise of almost 12 per cent compared with a day earlier.
In Ontario, outbreaks are hitting long-term care homes and leading to staff absences of between 20 and 30 per cent in some areas.
Long-Term Care Minister Rod Phillips says there are outbreaks at 186 homes in 30 of Ontario’s 34 public health units.
WATCH | Quebec ICUs stretched thin:
ICU doctor warns of supply, demand mismatch
9 hours ago
Duration 6:37
Quebec intensive care physician Joseph Dahine says hospitals – and ICUs, in particular – in his province are stretched and health care workers exhausted as COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to rise. ‘There is a supply and demand mismatch,’ he said. 6:37
He says staffing is a concern but long-term care is affected differently than hospitals, which are still accepting new admissions despite being short-staffed.
The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CNFU) is calling on provincial governments to do more to ensure frontline health workers have the proper protection.
“The very people on the frontlines of this pandemic are still facing barriers to obtaining proper PPE, getting booster shots and being guaranteed sick leave when they test positive,” the union said in a statement.
And the CNFU president condemned the move by some provinces to allow COVID-infected health-care workers to continue working, saying it will put their colleagues, vulnerable patients and the health-care system at risk.
“We must stop normalizing needlessly putting health-care workers at risk,” said Linda Silas. “Nurses don’t come to work to be martyrs; they come to work to care for patients. Governments can and must provide them with the tools and equipment they need to care for patients while also caring for themselves.”
Surging cases of the Omicron variant are also putting pressure on some police and transit services across the country.
With 170 personnel booked off on leave related to COVID-19, the Winnipeg Police Service declared an internal state of emergency Wednesday. The Edmonton and Calgary police services warned of staffing challenges after a growing number of staff tested positive or were in isolation.
This morning, one of the largest cargo planes in the world brought millions of rapid tests to Canada. This shipment is part of what will be nearly daily deliveries, bringing 140M rapid tests to Canada in January alone. <a href=”https://t.co/2vJ8xnRDug”>pic.twitter.com/2vJ8xnRDug</a>
Ontario’s GO Transit said a temporary reduction in train and bus service in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton regions is set to begin within days due to staff shortages caused by COVID-19.
Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced Wednesday that Ottawa would distribute 140 million rapid tests across the country this month, four times the number delivered in December.
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said restrictions on the availability of molecular lab tests mean officials aren’t sure how many COVID-19 cases there truly are in Canada.
The latest figures from Health Canada indicate the Omicron variant has fuelled about 344,140 active cases across the country.
WATCH | Are schools driving transmission in children?
COVID-19: Are schools driving transmission in children?
2 days ago
Duration 5:59
Infectious diseases specialists Dr. Jacqueline Wong and Dr. Fatima Kakkar answers questions about COVID-19, including whether in-person classes are driving transmission in children. 5:59
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 2 p.m. ET
What’s happening across Canada
WATCH | Tracking COVID-19 through wastewater:
Tracking COVID-19 through wastewater as clinical testing systems overwhelmed
1 day ago
Duration 2:04
As testing systems become maxed out across the country, some experts are turning to wastewater testing as a way to determine how much COVID-19 is really in our communities. 2:04
With testing capacity strained, experts say true case counts are likely far higher than reported. Hospitalization data at the regional level is also evolving, with several provinces saying they plan to report figures that separate the number of people in hospital because of COVID-19 from those in hospital for another medical issue, who also test positive for COVID-19.
For more information on what is happening in your community — including details on health systems, test positivity rates and local restrictions — click through to the regional coverage below.
In Quebec on Thursday, health officials reported 1,953 hospitalizations and 26 additional deaths. The province also recorded 15,874 cases, with a positivity rate of 31.2 per cent. The update came as Health Minister Christian Dubé announced that the province’s vaccine passport system will eventually require three doses, although he did not provide a timeline for when that would happen.
WATCH | Will tougher measures help?
Quebec announces new COVID-19 measures aimed at the unvaccinated
5 hours ago
Duration 6:11
Dr. Jesse Papenburg, pediatric infectious disease specialist and medical microbiologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, joins Power & Politics to discuss Quebec’s new measures as the province braces for more than 3,000 COVID-19 related hospitalizations over the next two weeks. 6:11
Meanwhile, health officials in Ontario on Thursday reported 20 additional deaths and said 2,279 people were hospitalized. Provincial reports showed 13,339 new recorded cases, with a test positivity rate of 29.2 per cent.
Across the North, Nunavut is changing how it handles testing for COVID-19, with lab-based PCR tests being done only to “confirm COVID-19 is present in new communities, in high-risk settings such as Elders’ homes and other congregated facilities, and for those in critical service areas.”
“These changes will mean that official COVID-19 case counts in the territory will no longer reflect the total number of infections in our communities,” Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Michael Patterson said in a statement outlining the plan.
The Yukon has two patients in hospital, with 74 new cases reported Thursday, while health officials had not yet reported numbers for Thursday.
There is no one is hospital with the virus in the Northwest Territories, but officials reported 157 new cases, a new daily high.
In Atlantic Canada, Prince Edward Island Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison announced changes to isolation rules on Thursday, as the the number of people in hospital being treated for COVID-19 ticked up to four. Morrison said there were three other people in hospital being treated primarily for other illnesses who had tested positive for COVID-19. The live briefing, which focused largely on isolation and testing, came as the province reported 204 additional cases.
Omicron has a shorter incubation period.<br>(Exposure to symptoms)<br>Friday Jan 7th at 8am, Fully vaccinated people who tested positive, must isolate for 7 days.<br>They may leave isolation if they have no symptoms<br>Don’t visit high risk locations for 10 days.<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PEICovid19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#PEICovid19</a>
In Newfoundland and Labrador, health officials on Thursday said the number of hospitalizations stood at four. The province also reported 503 additional cases. The update came as officials announced remote learning would continue for another week.
New Brunswick is currently treating 63 patients in hospital with COVID-19, with 19 in the ICU. The province has a seven-day positivity rate of 28.9 per cent as of Thursday, and 672 new cases.
Health officials in Nova Scotia reported 48 patients in hospital, with one in ICU. There are 745 new cases.
WATCH| Premier says N.S. needs help:
Nova Scotia requesting assistance from Ottawa to help with booster vaccination efforts
5 hours ago
Duration 10:22
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston joins Power & Politics to discuss the latest on COVID-19 in his province. 10:22
In the Prairie provinces, the government in Manitoba is changing its COVID-19 testing process amid rising case numbers and a backlog of tests. Health officials say most people going to provincial testing sites will now be given rapid antigen tests to take home instead of a lab test on-site. The province on Thursday reported 263 hospitalizations, with 33 in the ICU. The province reported 2,548 additional cases and six new deaths.
Saskatchewan health officials on Thursday reported 100 hospitalizations, with one new death. There were 913 additional cases.
In Alberta, the province hit a new milestone with one million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered. But it came as hospitalizations, fuelled by Omicron, were up. The test positivity rate in Alberta is now at 39 per cent, and the province has 498 people in hospital with COVID-19 Thursday, and 64 in the ICU. There were three additional deaths and 4,869 additional cases with a test positivity rate of 39 per cent.
In British Columbia, health officials are dealing with a seven-day 23.2 per cent test positivity rate, with 324 people in hospital and 90 in ICU. There were 3,223 new cases reported Thursday along with three additional deaths.
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 7:30 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
WATCH | COVID-19: What are the new symptoms?
COVID-19: What are the new symptoms?
3 days ago
Duration 5:41
Infectious diseases specialists Dr. Danielle Martin and Dr. Zain Chagla answer questions about COVID-19, including how to recognize and respond to new and evolving symptoms. 5:41
As of early Thursday evening, more than 299.1 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracking tool. The reported global death toll stood at more than 5.4 million.
Top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday against complacency about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, saying the sheer number of cases could strain hospitals despite signs of lower severity.
The staggering pace of Omicron’s spread has snarled life across the country, upending the restart of school after the holiday break, halting air travel, shuttering entertainment venues and throwing a wrench into back-to-office plans.
“[Omicron] could still stress our hospital system because a certain proportion of a large volume of cases, no matter what, are going to be severe,” Fauci told reporters at a White House briefing.
Members of the Ohio National Guard put on personal protective gear as they prepare to administer COVID-19 tests at a drive-thru testing site on Wednesday in Akron, Ohio. (Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)
Elsewhere in the Americas, Brazil’s Health Ministry said it will go ahead with the voluntary vaccination of children aged five to 11 against COVID-19 and dropped plans to require a doctor’s prescription.
The head of the Centers for Disease Control in Africa said on Thursday that he was encouraged by the way that South Africa had handled its latest COVID-19 infection wave, adding that severe lockdowns were no longer a tool to contain the coronavirus.
“We are very encouraged with what we saw in South Africa in this period,” John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told a news conference.
“The period where we are using severe lockdowns as a tool is over. We should actually be looking at how we use public health and social measures more carefully, and in a balanced way, as the vaccination increases.”
As of today the cumulative number of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> cases identified in SA is 3 494 696 with 11 106 new cases reported. Today 110 deaths have been reported bringing the total to 91 561 deaths. The cumulative number of recoveries now stand at 3 249 738 with a recovery rate of 93% <a href=”https://t.co/wYNu58BRWS”>pic.twitter.com/wYNu58BRWS</a>
In the Asia-Pacific region, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday people who have not taken COVID-19 shots will be arrested if they disobeyed stay-at-home orders as infections hit a three-month high.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has asked that the U.S. military in Japan stay inside its bases to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. Japan’s prime minister said he backs Hayashi’s request and has decided to tighten anti-virus measures in Okinawa and Yamaguchi, where U.S. bases are located.
Indian megacities Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases, although without a corresponding rise in hospitalizations. Fears are growing about a spread to rural areas in coming days.
In the Middle East, Israel changed its quarantine and testing policy in an effort to ensure continued protection for vulnerable populations from a surge in infections.
A woman receives a dose of the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19 in Italy on Wednesday. (Guglielmo Mangiapana/Reuters)
In Europe, France reported 261,481 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, less than the record of more than 332,000 set on Wednesday, but the seven-day moving average of new cases rose above 200,000 for the first time since the start of the health crisis.
Italy made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for people from the age of 50.
Orthodox Christians in Russia, Serbia and other countries began Christmas observances Thursday amid restrictions aimed at dampening the spread of the coronavirus, but few worshipers appeared concerned as they streamed into churches.
Orthodox believers attend Mass amid an outbreak fueled by the Omicron variant in Moscow, on Monday. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/The Associated Press)
-From Reuters and The Associated Press, last updated at 7:30 p.m. ET
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.
___
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.
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.
___
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.
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.
