Four years ago, Sonja Mally was a busy tattoo artist with a photographic memory and penchant for long hikes.
Now, the 38-year-old Toronto woman considers it a good day if she can do a small drawing, muster the energy to walk around the block or “perform very basic tasks.”
“It’s a hard thing to have to explain to people why maybe one day you might be doing fine and the next day you can’t find the words to complete a sentence,” Mally said.
Debilitating long-COVID symptoms ended the career she loved and forced her to go on Ontario government disability payments, which she supplements with some part-time administrative work.
Mally’s world changed in March 2020, when she got what she thought was a mild cold – “nothing that I thought was going to slow me down.”
“It was what happened afterwards that was devastating for me.”
That COVID-19 infection led to respiratory problems and extreme fatigue. Then came more terrifying symptoms, including brain fog so severe that the artist couldn’t draw a clock during a neurology exam, as well as “excruciating pain” that “felt like my veins were on fire.”
The biggest difference between now and then, Mally said, is that the health-care community now recognizes long COVID is real.
“I don’t have to have that battle with medical practitioners (anymore) trying to convince them that this condition that I have exists.”
A recent Statistics Canada report estimated 3.5 million people in Canada, or 11.7 per cent of the adult population, reported “long-term symptoms” lasting at least three months after COVID-19 infection as of June 2023.
Many of those meet the World Health Organization’s definition of long COVID – also called post-COVID-19 condition – which is “the continuation or development of new symptoms three months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, with these symptoms lasting for at least two months with no other explanation.”
Forty-two per cent of the people in Canada reporting lasting symptoms had them for a year or more – and for many, they haven’t resolved, StatCan’s report said.
But Canadian doctors and scientists want long COVID patients to know that research is accelerating.
Long COVID Web, a research network of close to 600 health-care practitioners, scientists and patients across Canada, aims to not only help manage symptoms, but also find “solutions to get rid of long COVID,” said Dr. Angela Cheung, the network’s lead and a senior physician-scientist at University Health Network in Toronto.
Long COVID affects many different systems in the body, Cheung said, with the most common symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, cardiovascular problems and shortness of breath.
Cheung has seen many patients improve, and “quite a few” have even returned to their “baseline” functioning before COVID.
“Why some can return to baseline and others cannot, I’m not sure. But certainly it’s something that we need to better understand,” she said.
Susie Goulding of Cambridge, Ont., got infected around the same time as Mally back in 2020 and said she could barely function with similarly life-changing symptoms.
She gradually improved enough to run her flower shop and care for her 15-year-old son, but she still struggles with lingering brain fog.
“I think I’ve healed to a plateau,” said Goulding, 56.
“I have a lot of issues with word-finding and with the stamina of my brain. I can only do so much.”
A few months into her illness, Goulding started a Facebook group called COVID Long-Haulers Support Group Canada. Three and a half years later, there are close to 20,000 members, she said.
“It just kills me when people join our group and they said they had no idea (this could happen to them). You know, it’s sad,” she said.
Many long COVID patients live in fear of getting reinfected with COVID-19, or any other virus, because it can wipe out any recovery gains they’ve made, said Goulding.
“It’s really like the world has forgotten about COVID and has moved on and all of the safety precautions that were meant to keep people safe are no longer there,” she said.
“And so we have to navigate through the world as best as we can with our safety parameters in mind.”
Mally had a glimpse of hope last year, when she was “finally able to walk, go for little hikes again … I was just functioning on a much more normal kind of level.”
But she was only able to enjoy it for a couple of months before she caught a cold, despite taking precautions such as masking.
“I lost all that progress. I was in bed again for months and unable to do anything,” she said. “I’m still trying to work my way back from that.”
One dangerous misconception is that long COVID only happened to people who were infected earlier in the pandemic, said researchers.
Cheung said it’s possible the Omicron variant carries a smaller risk of long COVID than the previous Alpha or Delta variants did, but the risk is still significant because so many more people are infected with Omicron.
“This variant can and does cause long COVID,” said Dr. Jim Russell, a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and another researcher for Long COVID Web.
There’s growing evidence that vaccinations not only protect against dying and hospitalizations but against long COVID too, Russell said.
Like Cheung, Russell is hopeful they will find ways to treat long COVID by getting at the root of what causes it.
“I can’t help but believe that between Europe, U.S., Australia, Canada, we’re going to start seeing breakthroughs within the next year,” he said.
One of the main theories Russell is studying is overactive or sustained inflammation.
“When you get infected, your body turns on an inflammatory response to kill the virus … and you need that inflammatory response to recover,” Russell said.
“(But) this inflammation, unfortunately, doesn’t turn off in some people, and it keeps going for months,” likely damaging organs including the lungs and the brain that lead to long COVID symptoms, he said.
Researchers are also looking at immune system dysregulation, disruption of the microbiome in the gut, damage to endothelial cells in organs and unusual persistence of the virus in the body as other plausible theories for causes of long COVID.
Goulding, who joined the patient advisory group for Long COVID Web, said these are encouraging developments for long COVID sufferers.
“Don’t give up hope yet,” she said.
“When the research is just getting rolling, you know, there are going to be interventions that are going to help people.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec.15, 2023.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
