Health
Rate of positive flu tests plummets to nine-year low – CTV News
TORONTO —
Physical distancing measures aren’t just helping flatten the COVID-19 curve, with Canadian health authorities now reporting a nine-year low in the national rate of positive flu tests.
The Public Health Agency of Canada says the latest figures show “exceptionally low level of influenza activity.” From July 19 to Aug. 22, the percentage of tests that came back positive for influenza was 0.03 per cent, a fraction of the five-year average of 1.43 per cent.
That rate is the lowest level reported for the past nine flu seasons.
The reason behind the dramatic drop, health officials suggest, has a lot to do with the pandemic. Patients with flu-like symptoms may be less prone to seek medical attention, officials say, and six months of physical distancing measures may also have helped stall the spread of the airborne illness.
COVID-19 is much more serious than the seasonal flu, but the two viruses are similar in that they are both spread through droplets in the air when an infected individual coughs, sneeze or speaks.
Testing for influenza in the latest five-week period was higher than usual, with reporting laboratories administering three times the average number of tests for this time of year.
The flu season typically lasts well into the spring, but this year it was cut nine weeks short. In mid-March, shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and lockdowns came into effect, the percentage of positive tests crossed the 5 per cent threshold, which is considered the end of the flu season.
Public health officials caution that comparing this year’s flu data to other years may be tricky because testing for respiratory viruses was different, particularly in the first four months of the pandemic.
So far this flu season, 2,485 hospitalizations have been reported, with 308 ICU admissions and 120 deaths.
Health officials have long worried that the onset of the fall flu season could coincide with a second wave of COVID-19 cases. Now, doctors across Canada have expressed concerns that they won’t be able to distinguish between the two viruses, both of which lead to headaches, coughing and fever.
Some family doctors have told CTV News that public health guidance needs to be more clear when it comes to how to approach COVID-19 testing during the flu season.
In its online guidance for physicians, Health Canada acknowledges that the overlapping symptoms may present “increased challenges with diagnosing COVID-19 during allergy season, or when there is circulating influenza or other respiratory viruses within Canada.”
As of Friday, 127,358 cases of COVID-19 have been reported across Canada, and 9,108 people have died.
Health
RCMP warn about benzodiazepine-laced fentanyl tied to overdose in Alberta – Edmonton Journal
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Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
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Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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