AMHERST, N.S. – With warmer weather on the way, and concerns about the spread of COVID-19, there are concerns about the impact the virus could have on cottage country near the border with New Brunswick.
“I haven’t heard of it happening here, but I’ve seen stories about cottage country in Ontario where it is happening,” area municipal Councillor Joe van Vulpen told SaltWire. “It would be a concern if it were to happen here because in some cases you may think you’re escaping when you’re actually carrying. It’s going to be a concern going into May, June and July with people going to their cottages.”
The area between Pugwash and the New Brunswick border at Tidnish Bridge has many cottages and many of them are in close proximity to each other. His hope is that most people would opt to stay at home this summer and only go to the cottage if they need to.
It’s a feeling shared by Cumberland County’s EMO co-ordinator Mike Johnson.
“If people are going to go their cottage and hunker down, stay there and not gather outside with others, whether they’re at their cottage or at their home it doesn’t make a big difference,” Johnson said. “The whole idea is to limit exposure. If people find they can limit exposure by going to the cottage and watching the water, then so be it.”
A Port Howe area resident, who asked not to be identified, said she has concerns with the upcoming cottage season.
“I live in cottage central. My concerns are people could be moving the virus around and they could be placing a burden on rural health care capacity,” she said. “They could also go undetected, or unenforced, for their isolation because no one is patrolling these areas and you know there will be campfires and other gatherings because no one is watching.”
The province’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Robert Strang said people going to the cottage run the risk of not having access to help should the need arise.
“If people in Nova Scotia go to a more remote area to protect themselves it’s OK as long as they’re being self-sufficient in that location,” he said. “However, if they have health conditions or are elderly and more vulnerable to severe conditions they also have to think about how they access care.”
Strang is urging non-Nova Scotians to refrain from coming to the province during the current crisis.
“This is not a time to be moving from one part of the country to another,” he said. “I would encourage people to stay in their home community in their home province as we all work to ride this COVID-19 situation out as a nation.”
While the Nova Scotia government began restricting access to the province at all entry points a week ago, some are being more closely watched than others.
The main land entry point at Fort Lawrence, near Amherst, is being staffed by provincial employees, but another land crossing 20 km away at Tidnish Bridge is not being monitored.
There’s just a sign there advising motorists to enter Nova Scotia via the Trans-Canada Highway.
“We are manning the main border and we continue to have an information stop to tell fellow Nova Scotians to go home and self-isolate,” Premier Stephen McNeil said Tuesday. “We have a number of people who cross that border daily for work and are practising all the protocols that public health has put out. Plus, we have goods and services crossing that border every day and we will continue to allow that to happen. If people are showing up at the border to vacation or socialize, we’re encouraging them to go home. If they choose to come to Nova Scotia, they have to self-isolate like the rest of us.”
Provincial Progressive Conservative leader Tim Houston said has supported the premier’s messaging throughout the health crisis, but feels all border crossings should be staffed, not just the major ones.
Houston said officials at the border crossings and law enforcement officers need to be given clear instructions and people need to understand self-isolation does not mean stopping to pick up groceries or gassing up their vehicles.
“We need to support the law enforcement community with clear instructions on how to handle that,” Houston said. “That should be consistent at all the crossings, including the secondary crossing at Tidnish. There should be someone there stopping cars and informing people that we are in a state of emergency and this is required if they wish to travel into Nova Scotia. They need to self-isolate. They need to know what this entails.”
Houston said there should be more than enough resources within the provincial government to ensure all the crossings are staffed.
He said if someone is going to their cottage they need to respect the requirements of social distancing.
“This is not the time for people to go to the cottage and have a bonfire or have a party with their neighbours,” he said. “Anyone who is going to their cottage needs to respect the advice of Dr. Strang and the premier and the requirements of the state of emergency.”
Some Ontario doctors have started offering a free shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus while Quebec will begin its immunization program next month.
The new shot called Nirsevimab gives babies antibodies that provide passive immunity to RSV, a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections for infants and seniors, which can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
Ontario’s ministry of health says the shot is already available at some doctor’s offices in Ontario with the province’s remaining supply set to arrive by the end of the month.
Quebec will begin administering the shots on Nov. 4 to babies born in hospitals and delivery centers.
Parents in Quebec with babies under six months or those who are older but more vulnerable to infection can also book immunization appointments online.
The injection will be available in Nunavut and Yukon this fall and winter, though administration start dates have not yet been announced.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
-With files from Nicole Ireland
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Polio cases are rising ahead of a new vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where violence targeting health workers and the police protecting them has hampered years of efforts toward making the country polio-free.
Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, said Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication.
The new nationwide drive starts Oct. 28 with the aim to vaccinate at least 32 million children. “The whole purpose of these campaigns is to achieve the target of making Pakistan a polio-free state,” he said.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Most of the new polio cases were reported in the southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and eastern Punjab province.
The locations are worrying authorities since previous cases were from the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban government in September suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. Authorities in Pakistan have said that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions beyond the Afghan border, as people from both sides frequently travel to each other’s country.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023. Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy this June for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, according to WHO.
Health officials in Pakistan say they want the both sides to conduct anti-polio drives simultaneously.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people with private health insurance would be able to pick up over-the-counter methods like condoms, the “morning after” pill and birth control pills for free under a new rule the White House proposed on Monday.
Right now, health insurers must cover the cost of prescribed contraception, including prescription birth control or even condoms that doctors have issued a prescription for. But the new rule would expand that coverage, allowing millions of people on private health insurance to pick up free condoms, birth control pills, or “morning after” pills from local storefronts without a prescription.
The proposal comes days before Election Day, as Vice President Kamala Harris affixes her presidential campaign to a promise of expanding women’s health care access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to undo nationwide abortion rights two years ago. Harris has sought to craft a distinct contrast from her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, who appointed some of the judges who issued that ruling.
“The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.”
The emergency contraceptives that people on private insurance would be able to access without costs include levonorgestrel, a pill that needs to be taken immediately after sex to prevent pregnancy and is more commonly known by the brand name “Plan B.”
Without a doctor’s prescription, women may pay as much as $50 for a pack of the pills. And women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness, since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours after sex.
If implemented, the new rule would also require insurers to fully bear the cost of the once-a-day Opill, a new over-the-counter birth control pill that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved last year. A one-month supply of the pills costs $20.
Federal mandates for private health insurance to cover contraceptive care were first introduced with the Affordable Care Act, which required plans to pick up the cost of FDA-approved birth control that had been prescribed by a doctor as a preventative service.
The proposed rule would not impact those on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poorest Americans. States are largely left to design their own rules around Medicaid coverage for contraception, and few cover over-the-counter methods like Plan B or condoms.
