Health
Ontario sees 994 new COVID-19 cases as health officials work to update vaccine rollout – CBC.ca
Ontario reported another 994 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, as the government works to update its immunization rollout following updated guidance that the time between doses for some vaccines can safely be pushed up to four months.
Public health units administered 30,409 doses of vaccine yesterday, a second straight record day in the province. A total of 268,118 people have received both shots and there are now immunization appointments being offered to residents aged 80 and older in at least 10 public health units.
Yesterday afternoon, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) issued a revised direction that the interval between shots for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can be extended to 16 weeks. Clinical trials have shown the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be up to 92 per cent effective after a single dose.
The move will allow more people to get a first dose more quickly.
In a statement, the Ontario Ministry of Health said it welcomed the new recommendations from NACI.
“This will allow Ontario to rapidly accelerate its vaccine rollout and get as many vaccines into arms as quickly as possible and, in doing so, provide more protection to more people,” a ministry spokesperson said in an email.
Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, also praised the new recommendation, saying it means the province might be able to move up its timeline of vaccinating all residents by early fall.
Williams said health officials are now in talks about how an adjusted timeline could affect Ontario’s reopening framework, adding that the move might allow some congregate settings to be “more flexible and more allowable.”
Don’t use AstraZeneca vaccine in people aged 65 and older: NACI
The province’s COVID-19 vaccine task force is now re-evaluating its immunization strategy as it awaits to hear more from the federal government about how many doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to expect in coming weeks. Health Canada approved the third vaccine last week.
NACI has also recommended against using the AstraZeneca vaccine in people aged 65 and older, even though Health Canada has authorized it to be used in adults of all ages.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said Thursday that Ontario will follow NACI’s recommendation, but wouldn’t specify whether or not the AstraZeneca vaccine will instead be prioritized to other age groups or vulnerable communities.
“We expect to distribute all of them broadly across the province,” she said.
Dr. Dirk Huyer, coordinator of the provincial outbreak response, said Ontario will continue to prioritize high-risk residents, but that it continues to look at “innovative approaches” to the vaccine rollout.
WATCH | Questions remain about the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to immunize seniors against COVID-19
Elliott also said earlier this week that the public can expect more clarity soon on who will qualify as an essential worker during phase two of the immunization campaign.
Also on Thursday, the government announced a further $500 million to help Ontario’s 444 municipalities offset costs of the pandemic.
The City of Toronto will receive $164 million, while Ottawa is set to receive $33.4 million.
You can see how much funding has been allocated to your own municipality here.
The additional money was announced jointly by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark and Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy.
Amounts to individual municipalities were determined by combining household data and the relative proportion of COVID-19 cases confirmed in their respective health units, the province said.
Premiers call on Ottawa to increase health-care funding
This comes as Ontario Premier Doug Ford and several other provincial leaders are calling on the federal government to shoulder a larger share of health care costs in Ottawa’s upcoming budget.
Quebec Premier François Legault, chair of the Council of the Federation, delivered that message at a virtual news conference on Thursday afternoon. Other premiers joined virtually.
The Canada Health Transfer is the federal government’s primary contribution to covering the delivery of health services in the provinces and territories.
Right now, the provinces spend about $188 billion on health care and the federal government covers $42 billion of that figure — roughly 22 per cent of total costs. The premiers have asked for a permanent increase in the federal share to 35 per cent cent, which works out to an additional $28 billion.
“Today we all have the same message for the federal government: now is the time to act and increase the Canada Health Transfer,” Legault said, adding that if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn’t act, it’s the country’s “most vulnerable that will suffer.”
“We believe that our demand is reasonable.”
If approved, Ontario says the budget increase would provide the province with more than $10 billion in additional health care funding, which would be allocated toward the following:
- Increasing access to home and community care so seniors can stay in their homes longer.
- Building more long-term care beds and improving the quality of care in long-term care homes.
- Addressing the large backlog of surgeries and procedures that has accumulated during the pandemic.
- Improving wait times and increase access to services and procedures at hospitals.
“In Ontario alone, 40,000 seniors are waiting for long-term care beds,” Ford said.
“Canadians can’t keep waiting for better health care … but the reality is, no province can do this alone.”
Announcement expected Friday regarding Toronto, Peel lockdowns
The new COVID-19 cases in today’s update include 298 in Toronto and 171 in Peel Region. Yesterday, the local medical officers in both health units asked that their respective regions be moved into the revised grey “lockdown” tier of the province’s colour-coded restrictions system.
That would mean that the stay-at-home order is lifted and non-essential businesses are allowed to reopen to customers with limited capacity, among other changes. You can read the province’s breakdown of each tier of the framework here.
Williams said the number of novel coronavirus variants, as well as the per cent positivity rates for both Toronto and Peel Region, are “going up steadily” and are “concerning” to health officials.
“These are not insignificant numbers,” he said. “We want to be cautious at this time.”
Williams is expected to announce on Friday the health units that will move to a new tier.
96 more cases linked to variants of concern
Other public health units that saw double-digit increases in cases were:
- York Region: 64
- Ottawa: 49
- Hamilton: 40
- Lambton: 39
- Simcoe Muskoka: 39
- Niagara Region: 37
- Halton Region: 33
- Thunder Bay: 24
- Durham Region: 23
- Waterloo Region: 23
- Sudbury: 18
- Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 18
- Windor-Essex: 16
- Middlesex-London: 12
- Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District: 10
(Note: All of the figures used in this story are found on the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard or in its Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any region may differ from what is reported by the local public health unit on a given day, because local units report figures at different times.)
This comes as Ontario’s lab network completed 65,463 tests for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and reported a test positivity rate of 2.1 per cent.
Labs also confirmed 92 more cases linked to the virus variant first identified in the United Kingdom, bringing the total thus far to 644. Another four cases were confirmed to be the variant first found in South Africa, pushing the total to 31.
On Tuesday, 350 test samples provincewide were screened for the tell-tale spike gene that suggests the presence of a variant of concern. The spike was detected in 136, or about 39 per cent, of those samples. Those samples are then sent for whole genomic sequencing to determine the specific variant of concern.
Meanwhile, the seven-day average of new daily cases fell to 1,064.
The Ministry of Education reported another 101 school-related cases: 77 students, 21 staff members and three people who were not identified. Twenty-six schools are currently closed to the illness. That’s about 0.54 per cent of Ontario’s 4,828 publicly-funded schools.
A total of 649 people with COVID-19 were in hospitals, according to the Ministry of Health. Of those, 281 were being treated in intensive care and 183 needed a ventilator.
The 10 additional deaths in today’s update push the province’s official toll to 7,024.
Health
We all experience stress. How we handle it is key to our health, say experts – CBC.ca
The Dose24:36What’s the connection between stress and my health and well-being?
It could be a morning traffic jam. A deadline at work. A conflict with a family member. Taking care of kids and aging parents.
Stressful situations are all around us, and experts say how we manage stress is key to preventing it from causing long-term health problems — both physical and mental.
Short-term stress doesn’t have to be negative, but research shows that ongoing stress wears away at the body’s systems and can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, Type 2 Diabetes, and mental health challenges.
“It’s like walking around with a ten or fifteen-pound weight continually on your back and not being able to shed that weight,” psychologist Dr. Zindel Segal told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC’s The Dose.
There are techniques and strategies to decrease that stressful load, however, and lessen the impact of stress on the body and the mind.
Is stress good or bad?
Stress means that we are unable to use our personal or social resources to meet the demands being placed on us, said Dr. Eli Puterman, a health psychologist and associate professor in the school of kinesiology at UBC.
But not all stress is bad stress, said Puterman.
“It sometimes can motivate you to also move in the direction of, ‘Let’s change our goals,'” he said.
From an evolutionary perspective, our bodies are engineered to handle stress, said Segal, a distinguished professor of psychology and mood disorders at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
But after the stress response, we need a period of rest and recovery, which allows the body to recoup the resources that were used up during the stressful situation.
Chronic stress is when we’re unable to step out of the situation and take advantage of our own natural capacity to restore, said Segal.
It’s a system that is “stuck in the fifth gear without the ability to downshift,” he said.
Connecting with your senses
The first step to managing stress is recognizing it, said Segal, and that means tuning into our bodies.
“Are you noticing that maybe your heart is racing, or that your palms are sweating, or that your temple and forehead are pounding?” he said.
Grounding techniques can anchor us in the present moment and help pull us away from intrusive thoughts or feelings to take a broader view of the situation, said Segal.
“One of the things that we lose the ability to connect with is the sensory world,” he said, which is why so many techniques for managing stress are about reconnecting with your senses.
“Sensations are a way of actually helping us step out of thinking, to ground ourselves.”
A breath of fresh air
Doing yoga, meditating, exercising and deep breathing can all help ground us in our bodies and change our perspectives on stress, said Segal.
However, stress can cause barriers to being physically active, said Puterman, so he prefers to think about moving our bodies as opposed to exercising.
“Getting outside and going for some walks for 10, 15 minutes per day can help us start having those moments where we’re taking care of our bodies,” he said.
The Dose1:50A guided exercise in box breathing
One simple exercise Segal recommends is a technique called box breathing. Here’s how to try it:
- Sit in a chair and notice the sensations of sitting: the feet pressing down into the floor, the hands folded in the lap or on the thighs.
- Breathe in for four beats (visualize the left side of the box).
- Hold for four beats (visualize the top of the box).
- Breathe out for four beats (visualize the right side of the box).
- Hold for four beats (visualize the bottom of the box).
- Repeat as many times as you like.
What stress does to the body
It may be easy to understand how stress can take an emotional and mental toll, but research also shows that stress can have an impact on our physical health — including an increased risk of heart attack or stroke.
“In the short term, it rapidly increases your blood pressure, which can potentially result in a tear in the plaque that is in your arteries and then subsequently cause a heart attack or a stroke,” said Dr. Hassan Mir, a cardiologist at the Ottawa Heart Institute.
When we’re feeling stress, it activates our sympathetic nervous system, the part of our nervous system that carries signals related to our fight-or-flight response.
That can cause an increase in our blood pressure and heart rate, said Mir.
Another reaction to acute stress is a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or a weakened heart muscle, he said.
“When you’re really stressed, you can have this release of adrenaline in your body,” Mir said.
Mir has seen people who come into the hospital because their partner had a cardiac arrest, and then they suddenly get rushed to the ER because it looks like they’re having a heart attack.
“You go and look inside and the coronary arteries look completely fine, but their heart muscle looks like it’s completely weakened,” Mir said.
If you’re frequently activating your sympathetic nervous system due to stress, that can cause other issues in the body, said Puterman.
“If you’re starting to shift your baseline of the functioning of your physiology, you’re now entering the state where now you have too much cortisol that’s then activating too much glucose release,” he said.
Too much glucose released into the body can cause people to enter a pre-diabetes state, said Puterman.
How much stress is too much?
A little bit of stress could help us handle more stressful events in the future, a theory called the inoculation hypothesis, said Puterman.
“Some stress on a daily basis or in life actually inoculates you to future exposures to stressors,” he said.
But there are some telltale signs that the stress you’re experiencing is causing harmful effects, said Puterman. They include:
- Not sleeping well.
- Not getting as much exercise as usual.
- Consuming more alcohol or drugs.
- Withdrawing from others socially.
- Getting into more arguments with family or friends.
The trick is finding that sweet spot, said Segal, between having enough stress and too much.
“We don’t want to tip over into a point where the stress that we’re facing is overwhelming,” Segal said.
Health
Medical officer encourages measles vaccinations as global cases rise – SteinbachOnline.com
As cases of measles are increasing in parts of Canada and around the world, Manitobans are reminded that staying up to date on their vaccinations is one of the most important ways to prevent and reduce the risk of measles and other serious illnesses.
Measles is very contagious, says Dr. Mahmoud Khodaveisi, Medical Officer of Health for Southern Health-Santé Sud.
The most recognized symptom of measles is a red, blotchy rash, which often begins on the face and spreads down the body. Other common symptoms include fever, runny nose, cough, drowsiness, irritability and red eyes. Measles is a serious illness, especially for young children, and can result in lung and brain infections and other conditions that lead to serious complications or death.
Although there have been no recent confirmed cases of measles in our province since 2019, there is increasing concern as the number of cases are rising in Canada and around the world.
Dr. Khodaveisi says that before the vaccine was available, measles was a significant cause of childhood illness, and as a result, people born before 1970 are considered immune to measles as they were likely exposed growing up.
As part of Manitoba’s routine immunization schedule, children can receive two doses of a vaccine that protects against measles, first at 12 months and again between the ages of four and six. Together, these doses provide 97 per cent protection against measles.
The province reports that the most recent data available shows that about 80 per cent of children in Manitoba have received one dose of the vaccine that protects against measles by age two. Nearly 75 per cent of children have received two doses of the vaccine by age seven and this rate increases to over 88 per cent by the age of 17.
The province has sent information out about measles to health-care providers.
Measles is a reportable disease, meaning public health must be informed about cases by laboratories and health-care providers. Once a case is reported, public health will launch an investigation. This includes identifying close contacts, offering vaccination where appropriate and notifying the public of relevant exposures if needed.
Manitoba’s immunization registry was established in 1988, so records for anyone who has received immunizations since then should be contained in the registry.
If you are not sure if you or your children have been vaccinated, immunization records can be requested online at https://forms.gov.mb.ca/immunization-update-request/. Alternatively, you can contact your local public health office or contact your health-care provider.
-With files from Corny Rempel.
Health
Measles in Toronto: 2nd case confirmed
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A second lab-confirmed case of measles has been identified in Toronto.
The city’s public health agency said that an infant who recently returned from travel has contracted the disease. The child is recovering at home.
The first Toronto case was identified on Feb. 16.
Toronto Public Health is warning that anyone who attended the Agincourt Public Library between 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on March 11 may have been exposed. Individuals should monitor for symptoms until April 1 and double check that their vaccinations are up to date.
Symptoms of measles include red rashes, fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and fatigue. Individuals can also get unusual white spots in their mouth.
The number of measles infections in Ontario so far this year has already surpassed the total number of cases reported in 2023.
As of March 13, Public Health Ontario had confirmed at least eight cases of measles across the province. Cases have been identified in Peel Region, Hamilton, Brant County and Windsor-Essex County.
Of those infections, six were related to travel and two had an unknown source of exposure.
In 2023, there were seven cases of measles confirmed in Ontario.
Canada-wide data is less detailed, with the Public Health Agency of Canada reporting 17 cases of measles as of March 2, along with one case of congenital rubella syndrome.
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