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COVID-19 wastewater data shows cases are rising again across Canada – Global News

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Surveillance of wastewater data is suggesting that COVID-19 cases are on the rise again in Canada as provinces have eased public health restrictions.

The resurgence is taking place in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and parts of British Columbia, according to an analysis by Global News.

Read more:

COVID-19 hospitalizations, cases and deaths start to plateau as provinces lift measures

“The reality is that as all of the restrictions come off in terms of masking and the other measures which have been in place for some period of time, we can expect that more cases are going to be out there,” said Dr. Steve Hrudey, chair of the research advisory group of the Canadian Water Network COVID 19 Wastewater Coalition.

“The next few days to weeks are going to be important to watch,” he said.


Click to play video: 'COVID-19: What is wastewater testing, and how effective is it?'



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COVID-19: What is wastewater testing, and how effective is it?


COVID-19: What is wastewater testing, and how effective is it? – Jan 22, 2022

The wastewater signals are correlating with the reported infections through testing, but they paint a more accurate and full picture of how prevalent COVID-19 actually is in the community, experts say.

People infected with COVID-19 can shed the coronavirus through their stool, even if they do not have any symptoms, making the testing of a community’s sewage an important tool that can work in tandem with clinical testing data, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

“Wastewater testing provides a true picture of COVID-19 community health, especially in the current situation when resources for clinical testing may be limited in some areas,” said Anna Maddison, a PHAC spokesperson, in an emailed statement to Global News.

So what is Canada’s sewage water telling us about the latest COVID-19 spread?

In the province of Ontario, following a dip in February, COVID-19 cases started spiking in early March, coinciding with the province’s phased reopening.

This is according to the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, which is monitoring data from across 101 wastewater treatment plants, pumping stations and sewer sheds in 34 public health units.


Data source: Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table

Dr. Peter Juni, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Toronto and scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, said since Tuesday they have seen a “relatively steep increase” in coronavirus prevalence in the wastewater consistently in all regions in the province.

He said together with test positivity, the wastewater data is an early indicator that “as expected, we’re seeing a resurgence now.”

“There is a lag between what we are seeing in wastewater and in case counts,” Juni said.

“It remains to be seen how much of what we’re seeing in wastewater will eventually translate also into hospital occupancy,” he added.

Juni said since only 10 per cent of all infections are reported through testing, the actual case count in the province is likely 10 times higher.

“These 2,000 cases are more like 20,000 cases. In fact, when we use wastewater directly to triangulate case counts, we estimate that we’re at between 20 and 25,000 cases of infections daily,” he said.

It’s a similar story in Alberta, where an upward trend started in early March, according to wastewater samples collected, processed and reported by teams at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary.

This data covers more than 80 per cent of Alberta’s population.

Hrudey, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, said recent data does suggest that cases are climbing back up in the province, but not dramatically so as of yet.


All of Calgary and the surrounding area.


Data Source: Centre for Health Informatics, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary

Saskatchewan

Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are keeping a close eye on the wastewater trends of COVID-19 in Saskatoon, Prince Albert and North Battleford.

As of March 16, the viral load in Saskatoon’s wastewater increased by 66.3 per cent compared to the weekly average of the previous week.


Data Source: University of Saskatoon

“This increase in viral RNA load is indicative of an increase in SARS-CoV-2 infections in Saskatoon, which — in a partially vaccinated population — may or may not be reflected by new case numbers in upcoming weeks,” the USak researchers noted.

“The trend over the last three weeks has been increasing which indicates a double wave for the Omicron wave driven by the BA.2 subvariant,” they said.

In Prince Alberta, the viral load in wastewater was up by 96.1 per cent and in North Battleford by 93.2 per cent, data showed.

British Columbia

However, in British Columbia, the increase is less prominent for now.

This is according to the surveillance at five wastewater treatment plants, presenting 50 per cent of the province’s population.

Of the five regions being monitored by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) and Metro Vancouver, COVID-19 prevalence was only seen rising in Fraser and North Shore.


Data Source: B.C. Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC)

What the sewage data can tell us about COVID-19

Experts say wastewater surveillance has proven to be an effective tool for tracking COVID-19 trends and predicting future outbreaks.

“When you’re using wastewater surveillance, it’s a tool that helps you recognize very early how much community activity there is before people start becoming sick,” said Dr. Donald Vinh, an infectious disease specialist and medical microbiologist at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC).

Read more:

Sewage surveillance: Wastewater could fill COVID-19 testing gaps, experts say

It is also a harbinger of increased hospitalizations and deaths, he said.

Going forward, wastewater monitoring is going to be very important, both in the short term for COVID-19 and in the longer term for other types of germs, Vinh said.

However, this type of surveillance also has its limitations as it does not indicate which individuals, households or age groups are infected, he said.

© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

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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.

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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.

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World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa showed telltale warning signs before erupting in 2022

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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.

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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.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Waymo’s robotaxis now open to anyone who wants a driverless ride in Los Angeles

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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.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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