The Covid-19 outbreaks in New Brunswick continue to grow, with six new cases announced by health officials on Monday.
Dr. Jennifer Russell, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said all six cases are related to the ongoing outbreaks in Zone 1 (Moncton region) and Zone 5 (Campbellton region).
Russell said three of the new cases are in Zone 1 while the other three are in Zone 5. Five people remain in the hospital as of Monday, including one person in an intensive care unit.
There are now 76 active cases of Covid-19, the highest number of active cases the province has seen thus far.
“This isn’t the Thanksgiving that we were all hoping for or that we wanted, but as I said, Covid-19 doesn’t take holidays,” said Russell.
Russell said everyone in New Brunswick needs to do their part to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 and keep the case numbers down.
“Barely a week ago there were three active cases in this province and now we have outbreaks in two health zones which include potential incidents of community spread,” she said.
Anyone who travelled to an “orange” zone over the Thanksgiving weekend (Zone 1 or 5) need to observe the requirements of that recovery phase when they return home for 14 days.
That includes self-monitoring for symptoms, limiting your contacts to a two-household bubble, and maintaining a two-metre distance from others.
Russell also reminded residents in those zones that masks are also mandatory in all outdoor public places, in addition to indoor public places. That includes “anywhere other than the yard of a private single dwelling residence where the public gather, such as parks, playgrounds, markets, dog parks, etc.”
“When a phase orange is in place in a zone, we’re really trying to contain things very, very aggressively,” said Russell. “Having people mask indoors and outdoors, then that means that it’s continuous, everybody’s protecting each other. We do know that, even though people can be mingling outdoors, they don’t necessarily always physically distance.”
Residents in all other zones are only required to wear a mask in all indoor public places.
Russell also reminded anyone who regularly travels between here and Quebec that they can get tested twice a week, even if they don’t have any symptoms of the virus.
“I’ve heard many comments about asymptomatic testing versus asymptomatic testing and mass testing, etc. We’re really focused on the cases and the close contacts right now, and the people that are symptomatic,” she said.
Russell said we will likely see more confirmed cases in the coming days, but if everything goes well, those cases will be the people Public Health has already identified as close contacts and they are already self-isolating at home.
“The next 14 days will be critical in terms of how we see things unfolding here. That’s why the next 14 days are really, really important for people to be extremely vigilant,” she said.
Three Schools Will Be Closed Tuesday
Three schools in northern New Brunswick will remain closed Tuesday as officials deal with COVID-19 cases in the school community.
Education Minister Dominic Cardy said Académie Notre-Dame and L.E. Reinsborough School in Dalhousie will have an “operational response day”.
“Staff are going to use this day to roll out their response plans and students will learn from home. This is exactly what we’d always intended because as I’ve been making clear I hope from the beginning of this pandemic, it wasn’t a question of if or when we would have outbreaks like this, but how we would handle them.
Students at Sugarloaf Senior High School in Campbellton will learn remotely Tuesday and Wednesday, as previously announced, after a confirmed positive case last week.
Some people at Janeville Elementary School, near Bathurst, are being made aware of possible exposure, but Cardy said the school will remain open Tuesday.
Cardy said they are trying to balance keeping schools open as much as possible while also keeping people safe.
“This is a frightening moment when you talk about trying to keep schools open as much as possible. But that’s always been the goal because we can’t afford to lose more than 10 percent of a child’s education, losing a year or more of schooling, so our goal is to keep the schools open and to keep our schools safe,” he said.
Meanwhile, schools in New Brunswick’s “orange” zone of recovery will have new rules to follow designed to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread.
Cardy says enhanced mask use will be required by students from kindergarten to Grade 12 when they return to class on Tuesday.
“Masks are going to be required on the bus, indoors and outdoors throughout the day, except when eating or engaged in physical activity. For students in K-to-8, they’ll be able to remove their masks if they’re working silently alone at their desks.”
There are no changes for students attending school in the “yellow” zone of recovery, including in the Saint John and Fredericton regions.
All intramural, interscholastic and extra-curricular activities are also suspended in the “orange” zones until they return to the “yellow” phase.
Cardy also used Monday’s media briefing to ask New Brunswickers to stop spreading misinformation both online and offline.
He said the province is doing its best to provide accurate, up-to-date information through briefings and the COVID-19 dashboard.
“I’d ask for folks who are online to think twice, think three times before you tweet, reshare, post something that you’re not sure about. Do not spread information about people you think might be sick. Do not spread information about stories you might have heard from a friend of a friend about a school or a long-term care home,” said Cardy.
“The way that we can get through this is by making sure the information we share is accurate so that we can make the best decisions based on that information.”
With files from Christina Mulherin and Brad Perry.
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.
