VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s provincial health officer says the findings of a study she co-authored showing children and youth have had the highest rates of COVID-19 in parts of the province should not be interpreted to suggest those infections occurred mostly in schools.
Dr. Bonnie Henry has been criticized by some parents, advocacy groups and health-care professionals who say a major jump in infections occurred during the school year among children under age 10.
They say measures like masking for all students and ventilation upgrades in schools could have been taken earlier and should be continued to protect children from an airborne virus, especially as more transmissible variants emerge.
However, Henry said school-aged children were becoming infected when they were not eligible for a vaccine as transmission was rising in the community, but that most youth had a mild illness and were not hospitalized.
“We have shown, multiple, multiple times, that what happens in schools reflects what’s happened in the community.”
Measures were taken at schools to prevent prolonged closures in order to protect students’ emotional well-being, and that goal was shared by the BC Teachers Federation, Henry said.
“Every single school had an assessment of their ventilation, every single school had measures put in place to ensure that it was improved. And that’s one of the permanent things that we need to continue,” Henry said.
The Education Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for information on the standard of ventilation upgrades that have been completed.
A spokesman for the BC Teachers Federation said no one was available to comment on any concerns the union may have, but a public reporting on ventilation upgrades was expected by either the ministry or school districts.
Henry said enhanced cleaning measures are in place, and other steps that everyone should continue taking include washing their hands and staying home when they’re sick, especially as influenza season is expected to start earlier this fall.
“But then there are disruptive things like cohorting, the physical distancing, the mask mandates in certain settings. Those are overarching, broad tools that were meant to be temporary. And they were in place during the period of time when we had high transmission of the new virus, Omicron, until we could support the level of immunity primarily through vaccination,” Henry said.
“We slowed it down as much as we possibly could, by using those very broad measures.”
She said the findings of the preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed and was published on the internet site medRxiv last week, are similar to those in other jurisdictions where schools were closed for much longer than in B.C.
The study lists Henry among 13 experts, including those from the BC Centre on Disease Control and the University of British Columbia. It says a series of surveillance reports of infections from the start of the pandemic until August this year show at least 70 to 80 per cent of youth in Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley have been infected with COVID-19.
In contrast, 60 to 70 per cent of adults aged 20 to 59 and about 40 per cent of those aged 60 and over have been infected, says the study, which is based on 14,000 anonymized blood samples obtained between March 2020 and this August from a network of outpatient laboratories.
Hybrid immunity from both high levels of infections and vaccinations is “good news” because it’s protecting everyone, Henry said in response to those who have suggested the study shows a “let it rip” approach was used in schools to achieve that goal.
Henry urged all eligible B.C. residents to get a booster shot of a recently approved bivalent vaccine that offers protection against variants, including Omicron. The province is expected to send invitations for second booster shots this month.
Dr. David Buckeridge, scientific lead for data management and analysis at the federally funded COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, said findings in the study involving Henry are consistent with those around the world as Omicron took hold.
Data on younger age groups is limited in Canada, but information from Canadian Blood Services shows that in June, 71 per cent of donors between the ages of 17 and 19 had contracted COVID-19 across the country, and the number for the same age group rose to 72 per cent in July, he said.
However, the average sample size for those months involves about 530 people, said Buckeridge, who is also an epidemiologist and professor at the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 14, 2022.
VANCOUVER – Mayors and other leaders from several British Columbia communities say the provincial and federal governments need to take “immediate action” to tackle mental health and public safety issues that have reached crisis levels.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says it’s become “abundantly clear” that mental health and addiction issues and public safety have caused crises that are “gripping” Vancouver, and he and other politicians, First Nations leaders and law enforcement officials are pleading for federal and provincial help.
In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier David Eby, mayors say there are “three critical fronts” that require action including “mandatory care” for people with severe mental health and addiction issues.
The letter says senior governments also need to bring in “meaningful bail reform” for repeat offenders, and the federal government must improve policing at Metro Vancouver ports to stop illicit drugs from coming in and stolen vehicles from being exported.
Sim says the “current system” has failed British Columbians, and the number of people dealing with severe mental health and addiction issues due to lack of proper care has “reached a critical point.”
Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer says repeat violent offenders are too often released on bail due to a “revolving door of justice,” and a new approach is needed to deal with mentally ill people who “pose a serious and immediate danger to themselves and others.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
