MONTREAL — Percylla Battista said she last spoke to her sister, Maggie Quart Robitaille, a week before Quart Robitaille tested positive for COVID-19.
“She was feeling pretty good,” Battista said in a recent interview. “She didn’t think she would get COVID because she had already been vaccinated four times.”
But on April 13, Quart Robitaille died at age 82, less than two weeks after testing positive for COVID-19. She was among the 3,325 people reported to have died in the province from the novel coronavirus since the Omicron wave started in mid-December.
While vaccination and improved treatment have made COVID-19 less deadly, Quebec reported Saturday that there have been15,000 deaths attributed to the pandemic in the province — the most in Canada. Quebec’s death rate also remains the highest in the country, at 174 deaths per 100,000 people. In Ontario, there have been 86 deaths per 100,000 people. Across Canada, there have been 102.
Simona Bignami, a demography professor at Université de Montréal who studies population health, said less attention is being paid to people who have recently died of the disease, like Quart Robitaille, compared to those who died during the pandemic’s first wave, which killed more than 5,686 people.
It’s understandable, Bignami said in a recent interview, that people are trying to regain some sense of normalcy. But in doing so, she said, “there has been, unfortunately, less emphasis on the people who continue to die of COVID-19.”
While COVID-19 deaths tend to be concentrated among people who are 70 and over, Bignami said that over the past year, the proportion of people between 50 and 69 who have died has risen.
According to Quebec’s public health institute, 12.9 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in the province during the fifth wave that began in December involved people aged 50 to 69, up from 7.8 per cent during the first wave. During the ongoing sixth wave, 9.1 per cent of deaths have been among people aged 50 to 69.
But Bignami said governments aren’t releasing enough data about who is dying, information that’s essential for risk assessment as the pandemic continues.
“Is it still the case that the deaths are concentrated among the unvaccinated? What is really the burden of mortality among those who are vaccinated and what is the actual mortality risk if one is vaccinated with two doses versus three doses?” she asked. “The only country that has done extensive studies of this has been Israel.”
Dr. Rodica Gilca, a medical epidemiologist at the province’s public health institute, said the biggest change in pandemic-related mortality has been its decline.
According to the institute’s data, there have been more than 104,000 confirmed cases during the current wave of the pandemic, which began in mid-March, and 660 deaths.
“We see that it has decreased and that it’s really decreased in all age groups,” Gilca said in a recent interview. “We’re seeing the most significant decrease in the oldest people.”
People with multiple other conditions, older people and those who are unvaccinated remain the most likely to die from the disease, she added.
Quebec’s interim public health director, Dr. Luc Boileau, has acknowledged that the province has seen a “huge” number of deaths linked to COVID-19. Quebec’s high death toll, he said last Thursday, is explained by the fact the province counts a COVID-19 death as any death involving someone who has the disease.
He said a government study from January indicated that around 30 per cent of the official COVID-19 deaths in the province’s hospitals involved people who tested positive for COVID-19 but whose principle cause of death was not the disease. He said about 40 per cent to 50 per cent of official COVID-19 deaths in the province involve people who had the disease but who died of other causes.
“The lethality rate has dropped continuously since the first wave,” Boileau said. “The vaccinations and the medical services that they’re offering inside our hospitals are very good, so that’s why we’re observing the lethality rate going down and down and down, which is great.”
But, for Battista, the death of a family member is a sad reminder that the pandemic isn’t over.
“I’m going to miss our phone calls, our chit chats and gossip and all that stuff,” Battista said, adding that she’ll remember her sister as an avid reader, an oil painter and a crafter who was fond of knitting and crochet.
While governments may be trying to move past the pandemic, Battista said she’s still taking precautions.
“I firmly believe that we’re all going to get COVID If we aren’t careful, and those of us who are older all have some kind of (health) issue,” Battista said. “We’re more vulnerable. I just can’t understand how governments have rescinded all the measures that they were taking to keep us healthy.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2022.
Some Ontario doctors have started offering a free shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus while Quebec will begin its immunization program next month.
The new shot called Nirsevimab gives babies antibodies that provide passive immunity to RSV, a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections for infants and seniors, which can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
Ontario’s ministry of health says the shot is already available at some doctor’s offices in Ontario with the province’s remaining supply set to arrive by the end of the month.
Quebec will begin administering the shots on Nov. 4 to babies born in hospitals and delivery centers.
Parents in Quebec with babies under six months or those who are older but more vulnerable to infection can also book immunization appointments online.
The injection will be available in Nunavut and Yukon this fall and winter, though administration start dates have not yet been announced.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
-With files from Nicole Ireland
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Polio cases are rising ahead of a new vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where violence targeting health workers and the police protecting them has hampered years of efforts toward making the country polio-free.
Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, said Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication.
The new nationwide drive starts Oct. 28 with the aim to vaccinate at least 32 million children. “The whole purpose of these campaigns is to achieve the target of making Pakistan a polio-free state,” he said.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Most of the new polio cases were reported in the southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and eastern Punjab province.
The locations are worrying authorities since previous cases were from the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban government in September suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. Authorities in Pakistan have said that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions beyond the Afghan border, as people from both sides frequently travel to each other’s country.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023. Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy this June for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, according to WHO.
Health officials in Pakistan say they want the both sides to conduct anti-polio drives simultaneously.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people with private health insurance would be able to pick up over-the-counter methods like condoms, the “morning after” pill and birth control pills for free under a new rule the White House proposed on Monday.
Right now, health insurers must cover the cost of prescribed contraception, including prescription birth control or even condoms that doctors have issued a prescription for. But the new rule would expand that coverage, allowing millions of people on private health insurance to pick up free condoms, birth control pills, or “morning after” pills from local storefronts without a prescription.
The proposal comes days before Election Day, as Vice President Kamala Harris affixes her presidential campaign to a promise of expanding women’s health care access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to undo nationwide abortion rights two years ago. Harris has sought to craft a distinct contrast from her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, who appointed some of the judges who issued that ruling.
“The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.”
The emergency contraceptives that people on private insurance would be able to access without costs include levonorgestrel, a pill that needs to be taken immediately after sex to prevent pregnancy and is more commonly known by the brand name “Plan B.”
Without a doctor’s prescription, women may pay as much as $50 for a pack of the pills. And women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness, since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours after sex.
If implemented, the new rule would also require insurers to fully bear the cost of the once-a-day Opill, a new over-the-counter birth control pill that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved last year. A one-month supply of the pills costs $20.
Federal mandates for private health insurance to cover contraceptive care were first introduced with the Affordable Care Act, which required plans to pick up the cost of FDA-approved birth control that had been prescribed by a doctor as a preventative service.
The proposed rule would not impact those on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poorest Americans. States are largely left to design their own rules around Medicaid coverage for contraception, and few cover over-the-counter methods like Plan B or condoms.
