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
Real-world experience, rather than hard data, suggests AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine may be effective at decreasing deaths in older people, prompting some countries to permit its use for those over 65. 4:47
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.
Québec Premier François Legault, chair of the Council of the Federation, speaking at a news conference on Thursday. Other premiers joined virtually. (CBC)
“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.”
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.
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.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
