Health Canada is monitoring a new COVID-19 variant that has been detected in several countries, public health officials have confirmed.
The World Health Organization (WHO) added BA.2.86 to its list of COVID-19 variants that are under monitoring on Thursday.
While there are no cases of BA.2.86 confirmed in Canada yet, Health Canada told CTVNews.ca that public health officials are also monitoring for any cases that may arise.
“The Government of Canada has a strong monitoring program in place with the provinces and territories to identify COVID-19 variants in Canada,” a spokesperson for Health Canada said in an emailed statement Monday.
“Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) scientists, along with national and international experts, are actively monitoring and evaluating BA.2.86 lineages and their associated studies.”
The new variant has been detected in Denmark, Israel and the U.S. since late July, according to the open global genome sequencing database GISAID.
Epidemiologists and infectious disease experts maintain that the emergence of this new variant is not yet reason to be concerned.
“People should be cautious about jumping to premature conclusions,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a Toronto-based infectious disease expert, during a phone interview with CTVNews.ca on Monday.
“As it stands, we’re at six genotypes from four countries on three continents. That’s all,” he said. “So we know what the genetic make-up is and there are components of that that raise an eyebrow for sure, but that’s about all we know.”
Bogoch explained that this emerging variant deviates from more recent mutations of COVID-19.
“There were components of this mutation that were reminiscent of BA2, which we saw much earlier on in the Omicron era,” he said. “There were [also] components similar to Delta mutations.”
Since the detection of this mutation is still early, Bogoch said that not enough information is known about BA.2.86’s transmissibility.
“We don’t know anything about what we would call virulence – how hard a punch [a variant] like this would pack.”
Bogoch added that detection tactics such as wastewater surveillance have proven “extremely important.”
“Genotyping,” a component of pathogen surveillance networks, allow scientists to observe changes in viruses in multiple regions – through waste water or clinical diagnosis – and then share data to open source public networks, he explained.
Dr. Tyson Graber, a research associate at the CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa who has helped detect prior variant mutations in wastewater research, further emphasized that it’s too soon to tell how transmissible the virus will be.
“BA.2.86 is not yet contributing to the current wave that has begun in many locations in Europe, the U.S. and here in Canada,” he wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca. “But clinical and wastewater surveillance networks in Ontario are providing the public with excellent situational awareness as we head into an uncertain fall pandemic period.”
According to WHO, all viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, change over time.
“Most changes have little to no impact on the virus’s properties. However, some changes may affect the virus’s properties, such as how easily it spreads, the associated disease severity, or the performance of vaccines, therapeutic medicines, diagnostic tools, or other public health and social measures,” the organization’s website reads.
Bogoch believes the important part of this new COVID-19 lineage is that these cases were “detected early.”
“They were shared globally rather quickly,” he said. “And we’ll learn a lot more about this in the coming weeks as more genomes are uploaded to the system. It’s too soon to know whether this is going to amount to anything or not.”
KITCHENER, Ont. – Prosecutors are arguing a man who stabbed a professor and two students in a University of Waterloo gender studies class last year should face a lengthy sentence because of the attack’s lasting impact on campus safety and security.
Federal prosecutor Althea Francis says a sentence in the upper range is appropriate not only because Geovanny Villalba-Aleman wanted to send a message about his views but also because he sought to make those with different beliefs feel unsafe.
The Crown has said it is seeking a sentence of 16 years for Villalba-Aleman, who pleaded guilty to four charges in the June 2023 campus attack.
The sentencing hearing for Villalba-Aleman began Monday and is expected to continue all week.
Federal prosecutors argued Tuesday that Villalba-Aleman’s statement to police, and a manifesto that was found on his phone, show his actions were motivated by ideology and meant to intimidate a segment of the population.
Villalba-Aleman pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault, one count of assault with a weapon and one count of assault causing bodily harm.
A video of his statement to police was shown in court earlier in the sentencing hearing.
In the video, Villalba-Aleman told police he felt colleges and universities were imposing ideology and restricting academic freedom, and he wanted the attack to serve as a “wake-up call.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.
OTTAWA – The Bank of Canada cut its key policy interest rate by 50 basis points on Wednesday to bring it to 3.75 per cent. Here’s what people are saying about the decision:
“High inflation and interest rates have been a heavy burden for Canadians. With inflation now back to target and interest rates continuing to come down, families, businesses and communities should feel some relief.” — Tiff Macklem, Bank of Canada governor.
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“Activity in Canada’s housing market has been sluggish in many regions due to higher borrowing costs, but today’s more aggressive cut to lending rates could cause the tide to turn quickly. For those with variable rate mortgages – who will benefit from the rate drop immediately – or those with fast-approaching loan renewals, today’s announcement is welcome news indeed.” — Phil Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage.
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“This won’t be the end of rate cuts. Even with the succession of policy cuts since June, rates are still way too high given the state of the economy. To bring rates into better balance, we have another 150 bps in cuts pencilled in through 2025. So while the pace of cuts going forward is now highly uncertain, the direction for rates is firmly downwards.” — James Orlando, director and senior economist at TD Bank.
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“The size of the December rate cut will depend on upcoming job and inflation data, but a 25 basis point cut remains our baseline.” — Tu Nguyen, economist with assurance, tax and consultancy firm RSM Canada.
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“Today’s outsized rate cut is mostly a response to the heavy-duty decline in headline inflation in the past few months. However, the underlying forecast and the Bank’s mild tone suggest that the future default moves will be 25 bp steps, unless growth and/or inflation surprise again to the downside.” — Douglas Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.
