The health unit says the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7), which was first identified in the U.K., has accounted for nearly all of them — 3,356 cases.
The Gamma variant (P.1), which was first identified in Brazil, accounts for 96 cases. One case has also been confirmed to involve the Zeta (P.2) variant — another lineage first identified in Brazil in October 2020.
Twenty cases have been confirmed to involve the B.1.617 variant, first identified in India. Nineteen are listed as being the Delta sub-lineage (B.1.617.2) and one the Kappa sub-lineage (B.1.617.1).
Two cases have been confirmed to involve the Beta variant (B.1.351), first identified in South Africa.
A total of 11,366 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in London since the pandemic began, while 360 have been in Middlesex Centre.
The MLHU also announced Wednesday morning that, going forward, it will not be updating its dashboard on weekends or statutory holidays observed by the health unit.
As a result, the dashboard will not be updated on Thursday, July 1.
The health unit adds that when the dashboard is updated on Mondays it will include a breakdown by day of cases reported on Saturday and Sunday.
While the health unit will no longer be updating the dashboard seven days a week, it says it will provide urgent updates when necessary.
2:05 Canada’s COVID-19 death toll could be far higher than official number: study
Canada’s COVID-19 death toll could be far higher than official number: study
Hospitalizations
At least nine COVID-19 patients are in the care of London Health Sciences Centre, unchanged from Tuesday, with fewer than five people in the intensive care unit.
No patients in acute care and fewer than five in the ICU are from outside of the region, the organization says. LHSC only provides specific numbers when there are more than five to protect the privacy of patients.
Zero staff members at LHSC were positive for COVID-19 as of Wednesday.
At St. Joseph’s Health Care London, the organization reported no COVID-19 cases among its patients or staff as of June 24, the most recent data available.
Institutional outbreaks
There are currently no active institutional outbreaks listed.
An outbreak at LHSC’s University Hospital in 8TU Transplant Unit declared on June 13 is listed as resolved on June 29.
The outbreak was believed to be linked to the Gamma variant, though full sequencing was still in process as of Monday.
The outbreak was linked to fewer than five patients and fewer than five staff cases.
Vaccinations and testing
As of Monday, eligibility for shortened second-dose intervals is now available to everyone 12 and older, provided that appointments are booked at least 28 days after the first dose was administered.
One-day pop-up community clinics continue this week at select schools in the city and county. Locations, dates and times can be found on the Global News website.
As of June 26, the most recent data available, the MLHU reports 75.3 per cent of residents age 12 and older have received one dose, while 23.4 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Ontario is reporting 184 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, marking the first time the case count is below 200 since Sept. 10, 2020, when 170 new cases were reported.
The provincial case total now stands at 544,897 as the province, with the exception of Waterloo Region, enters Step 2 in the reopening plan.
All individuals age 12 and older are eligible to re-book their second appointment through the online booking portal or by phone at 1-800-922-0096 ext. 9, provided that second-dose appointments are booked at least 28 days after the first dose of an mRNA vaccine was administered.
The total number of variant cases and cases that have screened positive for a mutation consistent with a variant is 318, an increase of one from Tuesday.
According to HPPH, 93,265 of its residents have received at least one dose of vaccine, while 39,582 people are fully vaccinated, or 73 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively.
As of noon on Monday, June 28, anyone age 18 or older is now eligible to re-book their second appointment, provided that second-dose appointments are booked at least 28 days after the first dose of Moderna or Pfizer or eight weeks after a first dose of AstraZeneca.
There are no active outbreaks reported in the region as of Wednesday.
The region’s test positivity rate fell to 1.0 per cent for the week of June 13, down from 1.2 per cent the week of June 6.
Sarnia and Lambton
Lambton Public Health reported zero new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday and 10 recoveries.
The region’s total case count stands at 3,600 with 28 active cases, 3,510 recoveries and 62 deaths.
According to Bluewater Health, two patients in their care are confirmed to have COVID-19 as of Wednesday.
The region’s variant case tally is 644, up two from Tuesday.
An outbreak declared June 25 at Afton Park Place, a long-term care home, continues. It involves fewer than five cases among residents and fewer than five cases among staff and caregivers.
For the COVID-19 vaccine, residents can book and re-book using the health unit’s registration page. People can also call the vaccine call centre at 226-254-8222, however, call volume is expected to be very high.
Some pharmacies are also continuing to offer Pfizer or Moderna shots.
Lambton Public Health says 72.6 per cent of adults have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 37.8 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated.
The region’s test positivity rate is 1.8 per cent for the week of June 13, the latest available data.
—With files from Global News’ Gabby Rodrigues, Kelly Wang and Matthew Trevithick.
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.
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.
Patients who are older, don’t speak English, and don’t have a high school education are more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay in Canada, according to new research.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information measured preventableharmful events from 2023 to 2024, such as bed sores and medication errors,experienced by patients who received acute care in hospital.
The research published Thursday shows patients who don’t speak English or French are 30 per cent more likely to experience harm. Patients without a high school education are 20 per cent more likely to endure harm compared to those with higher education levels.
The report also found that patients 85 and older are five times more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay compared to those under 20.
“The goal of this report is to get folks thinking about equity as being a key dimension of the patient safety effort within a hospital,” says Dana Riley, an author of the report and a program lead on CIHI’s population health team.
When a health-care provider and a patient don’t speak the same language, that can result in the administration of a wrong test or procedure, research shows. Similarly, Riley says a lower level of education is associated with a lower level of health literacy, which can result in increased vulnerability to communication errors.
“It’s fairly costly to the patient and it’s costly to the system,” says Riley, noting the average hospital stay for a patient who experiences harm is four times more expensive than the cost of a hospital stay without a harmful event – $42,558 compared to $9,072.
“I think there are a variety of different reasons why we might start to think about patient safety, think about equity, as key interconnected dimensions of health-care quality,” says Riley.
The analysis doesn’t include data on racialized patients because Riley says pan-Canadian data was not available for their research. Data from Quebec and some mental health patients was also excluded due to differences in data collection.
Efforts to reduce patient injuries at one Ontario hospital network appears to have resulted in less harm. Patient falls at Mackenzie Health causing injury are down 40 per cent, pressure injuries have decreased 51 per cent, and central line-associated bloodstream infections, such as IV therapy, have been reduced 34 per cent.
The hospital created a “zero harm” plan in 2019 to reduce errors after a hospital survey revealed low safety scores. They integrated principles used in aviation and nuclear industries, which prioritize safety in complex high-risk environments.
“The premise is first driven by a cultural shift where people feel comfortable actually calling out these events,” says Mackenzie Health President and Chief Executive Officer Altaf Stationwala.
They introduced harm reduction training and daily meetings to discuss risks in the hospital. Mackenzie partnered with virtual interpreters that speak 240 languages and understand medical jargon. Geriatric care nurses serve the nearly 70 per cent of patients over the age of 75, and staff are encouraged to communicate as frequently as possible, and in plain language, says Stationwala.
“What we do in health care is we take control away from patients and families, and what we know is we need to empower patients and families and that ultimately results in better health care.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
