MONTREAL — Quebec’s top public health official said Wednesday the peak of the pandemic’s sixth wave has clearly passed and the province is ready to end its mask mandate for indoor public spaces on May 14.
“All the indicators are down, be it the number of cases, the number of health-care employees who are positive (for COVID-19), the number of hospitalizations,” interim public health director Dr. Luc Boileau told reporters in Quebec City. “The whole portrait is getting better and better.”
Boileau said masking will remain mandatory on public transportation and in health-care facilities. It will also be recommended in seniors residences and other facilities that may be home to vulnerable people.
“The virus is not leaving us on the 14th,” Boileau cautioned. “It will continue to be there.”
He said it’s possible the decline in the number of new COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations will slow once the mask mandate is lifted, but he doesn’t expect it to lead to a rise in new cases.
Roxane Borgès Da Silva, a public health professor at the Université de Montréal, said there will be more COVID-19 transmission in the province once the mask mandate is lifted.
“For sure, the virus will circulate more,” she said in an interview Wednesday. She said she hopes that will only mean it takes longer for the current wave to subside, but it is possible the number of new cases will rise.
Quebec will be the last province in Canada to lift its masking requirement. Prince Edward Island, the only other province with a mask mandate for public areas, plans to lift the health order effective Friday.
Boileau said it’s unlikely the mandate will be brought back, even though a seventh wave of COVID-19 is expected this fall. But he admits that could change. “We are not expecting to reintroduce any obligations for the wearing of the mask, or any other measures, but we do not know what’s going to happen,” he said.
Dr. Catherine Hankins, a public health professor at McGill University, said that with warmer weather on the way, it’s good timing for Quebec to lift its mask mandate.
“We are definitely on the downward slope of the sixth wave,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “We don’t know what’s going to happen next, but it looks like we have a bit of a reprieve for a few months, hopefully.”
However, she said it will be important to watch if cases of other respiratory infections, such as influenza, start to rise when the mandate is lifted.
Quebec reported 30 more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus Wednesday and a 19-patient drop in COVID-19 hospitalizations, for a total of 2,176 patients in hospital with the disease.
The mask announcement came the same day that Quebec’s statistics institute reported that the province’s life expectancy rose to 83 years in 2021, after a “significant decrease” in 2020 attributed to COVID-19. Life expectancy for Quebecers hit 82.9 years in 2019 before dropping to 82.3 in 2020.
The provincial statistics agency said excess mortality in the province was 4.5 per cent between the beginning of the pandemic and March 12, 2022.
That translates to 6,400 more deaths than would normally have been expected during that period, well below the more than 15,000 COVID-19 deaths that the province has reported. Boileau has said at least some of those deaths were people who had the disease when they died but for whom it was not their primary cause of death.
Premier François Legault told reporters at the province’s legislature that the data shows that Quebec’s efforts have paid off.
“What this says is that the measures that we put in place over the past two years have had results,” he said. “Of course, one death is one death too many, but thanks to the measures, thanks to masks, thanks to all the efforts we made on vaccination, we find that Quebec has had fewer deaths than the rest of Canada, than the United States, than the rest of the world.”
Boileau, however, said the 6,400 figure almost surely under-represents the true COVID-19 death toll. He said part of the reason excess deaths were lower than the number of official COVID-19 deaths may be that other diseases, including influenza, were less present in the province during the pandemic.
The statistics agency said Quebec’s excess mortality was lower than the 6.2 per cent observed in the rest of Canada and well below the 18 per cent seen the United States.
Several European countries, including France, Spain and the United Kingdom, had higher excess mortality rates than Canada, while New Zealand and Australia saw mortality drop below expected levels during the pandemic.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 4, 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.
