Health
COVID-19: Scientists urge Canadians to pick up booster shot pace – CTV News
Across Canada, there have been booster clinics and vaccine days, all to get more Canadians their shots — but recently, the drive to get shots into arms has hit a curb.
Health officials say they’ve been noticing enthusiasm waning.
“I think we’re all concerned with the drop,” Nicole Dupuis, CEO of Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, told CTV News. “We still have quite a number of individuals who have still not received a second dose.”
And although the advent of Omicron spurred regions to open up booster shots to more ages, the rate of Canadians getting booster shots has gone down.
So far, over 30 million Canadians are double-vaccinated.
Health Canada says 25 million third doses of Pfizer and Moderna have been ordered, but as of the most recent data, only 15 million third doses have been given out.
This means around 10 million have not gotten a booster shot.
“To get the best bang for your buck, you really you really should be getting the booster,” Mina Tadrous, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, told CTV News.
A new study conducted in Canada offers real world evidence that three shots offer the strongest protection, scientists say.
Researchers tracked data on over 20,000 people who were confirmed by PCR test to have contracted COVID-19 as Omicron slammed into Ontario in December. The study has been submitted for peer-review.
The study found that six months after having received two doses, there was very little protection left to prevent symptomatic illness from the Omicron variant.
That third dose, however cut the chance of illness with symptoms by 61 per cent.
This doesn’t mean that two doses provided no protection at all — when it came to protecting against hospital admissions and death from Omicron, two doses cut the risk by 82 per cent, the study found.
But that third dose reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 95 per cent.
The study also included data on the vaccine response to Delta in the same period, and shows how different the vaccine’s interaction with Omicron is. Two doses of the vaccine were 85-per-cent effective against symptomatic illness six months after the second dose as long as the patient had Delta instead of Omicron.
“It was not possible for us to study vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection before because the data to do so were not available at the time,” Dr. Jeff Kwong, one of the study authors, told CTV News.
But the bottom line, he says, is that “boosters improve protection against symptomatic and severe outcomes.”
Kwong, who is also a scientist with Public Health Ontario and interim director of the Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases, pointed out that even a small percentage difference in protection can mean a lot of hospitalizations when you look at how many people are contracting the virus overall.
“Our health system just doesn’t have enough excess capacity to be able to deal with that,” he said. “That’s why our hospitals are now overflowing once again.
“Really, two doses just doesn’t offer a whole lot of protection against Omicron. It’s a different variant.”
Scientists are hoping this Canadian data will convince those sitting on the fence about a booster shot.
“As a pharmacist, I see these conversations a lot and I have them with people,” Tadrous said. “When they talk about, ‘why do I need a booster, I thought you told me two doses and this thing’s over.’
“So this is again, supportive of the need for boosters and the continued action and call for Canadians to get boosters if they’re eligible.”
Tadrous added that studies that track vaccine effectiveness during a rollout are important because they provide real-world data that can reveal things clinical trials may have missed.
“When we roll something out into the real world, it goes to everybody,” Tadrous said. “With vaccines, that may have been limited to some populations, and so what it looks like in the real world is really important.”
Some researchers believe it is data like this that may prompt more regions to require a third dose to be considered fully vaccinated. But so far, the terminology has not shifted.
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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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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
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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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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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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