Three more cases of coronavirus bring Alberta tally to seven - Edmonton Journal

Health

Three more cases of coronavirus bring Alberta tally to seven – Edmonton Journal

Published

4 years ago

March 10, 2020

Harry Miller

Alberta has identified three more cases of coronavirus, raising the tally to seven, the province’s chief medical officer of health said Monday.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the new cases — one in the Edmonton area and two in the Calgary area — are linked to recent travel or close contact with people who have tested positive for the COVID-19 illness.

“Quickly catching these cases before they have a chance to spread is exactly what our approach is designed to do,” Hinshaw said.

A woman in her 70s in the Edmonton area is the fifth case. She had close contact with a man who was announced Friday with a presumptive case of COVID-19. The woman was also on board the Grand Princess cruise ship before returning to Alberta on Feb. 21.

The sixth case is a man in his 30s in the Calgary area who had recently travelled to Ukraine, Turkey and the Netherlands. He is a close contact of a woman whose illness was reported Sunday. The man’s symptoms began after his return on March 2.

“Health officials had already reached out to all individuals who may have been in close contact with both of these new cases as a part of the previous investigation,” Hinshaw said.

The seventh case is a woman in her 50s in the Calgary area who returned from a Caribbean cruise on the MS Braemar cruise ship last Wednesday. She developed symptoms after she returned home and was tested in an assessment centre on Sunday.

All three people are in isolation at home and are expected to fully recover.

All cases confirmed

Hinshaw said Monday all cases of COVID-19 reported in the province are now confirmed. Positive tests no longer require further confirmation from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

Almost 1,000 tests were completed over the weekend, with 700 done on Sunday alone.

Hinshaw said that all seven cases in the province are travel related. She emphasized the virus does not spread like measles —through the air or over long distances over time.

“However, it can spread person to person by larger droplets, like from a cough or sneeze, or by touching contaminated objects, then touching your eyes, nose or mouth,” Hinshaw said.

“This means that close contacts are the ones who are at the greatest risk of contracting the virus. So these new cases are not surprising.”

Best practices to prevent the infection from spreading include washing your hands, avoiding touching your face, coughing and sneezing into your elbow or sleeve and throwing out tissues and staying home when feeling ill.

Hinshaw said the risk of exposure to the virus in Alberta is still low but could change in the coming weeks.

“We need to start thinking about what our new normal will look like over the coming months. With no vaccine for this virus likely to be available for a year or more, to protect the population we need to protect each other,” she said.

“It is time to start greeting each other with elbow bumps or waves instead of handshakes. This is not an overreaction, but a very practical way of limiting the spread of germs.”

Edmonton and Calgary have assessment centres for possible cases. While Hinshaw didn’t have specifics on locations, she said people would be advised by HealthLink on where to go.

“We are focusing those centres on those who’ve travelled. Those individuals who’ve travelled in the last 14 days and have those symptoms would be considered to be at the highest risk of being exposed,” she said.

School response

Hinshaw said in the event of an exposure concern at a school, AHS would send out notifications to parents.

Edmonton Public Schools spokeswoman Anna Batchelor said in a statement an update was shared with families and staff on Friday about coronavirus and precautions that can be taken. This includes students or staff members staying home if they are feeling ill.

“We know some of our families and staff have travel plans for spring break. We’ve asked families and staff to consult the Government of Canada travel advisory website for the most recent information about possible risks,” Batchelor said.

“As the situation evolves, we will continue to look to public health officials to guide our processes and response.”

Edmonton Catholic Schools has a pandemic committee in place that meets regularly to discuss the evolving situation, said spokeswoman Lori Nagy in a statement.

The school district is preparing a message for staff and parents ahead of spring break travel that will go out before the end of the week. Nagy said notices are based on AHS protocols for the virus.

According to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization, there are 110,029 confirmed cases worldwide and 3,817 deaths. In Canada, there are 72 confirmed cases and one death.

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Health

Interior Health delivers nearly 800K immunization doses in 2023

Published

9 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

Interior Health says it delivered nearly 800,000 immunization doses last year — a number almost equal to the region’s population.

The released figure of 784,980 comes during National Immunization Awareness Week, which runs April 22-30.

The health care organization, which serves a large area of around 820,000, says it’s using the occasion to boost vaccine rates even though there may be post-pandemic vaccine fatigue.

“This is a very important initiative because it ensures that communicable diseases stay away from a region,” said Dr. Silvina Mema of Interior Health.

However, not all those doses were for COVID; the tally includes childhood immunizations plus immunizations for adults.

But IHA said immunizations are down from the height of the pandemic, when COVID vaccines were rolled out, though it seems to be on par with previous pre-pandemic years.

Interior Health says it’d like to see the overall immunization rate rise.

“Certainly there are some folks who have decided a vaccine is not for them. And they have their reasons,” said Jonathan Spence, manager of communicable disease prevention and control at Interior Health.

“I think there’s a lot of people who are hesitant, but that’s just simply because they have questions.

“And that’s actually part of what we’re celebrating this week is those public health nurses, those pharmacists, who can answer questions and answer questions with really good information around immunization.”

Mima echoed that sentiment.

“We take immunization very seriously. It’s a science-based program that has saved countless lives across the world and eliminated diseases that were before a threat and now we don’t see them anymore,” she said.

“So immunization is very important.”

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Remnants of bird flu virus found in pasteurized milk, FDA says

Published

10 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk had tested positive for remnants of the bird flu virus that has infected dairy cows.

The agency stressed that the material is inactivated and that the findings “do not represent actual virus that may be a risk to consumers.” Officials added that they’re continuing to study the issue.

“To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in a statement.

The announcement comes nearly a month after an avian influenza virus that has sickened millions of wild and commercial birds in recent years was detected in dairy cows in at least eight states. The Agriculture Department says 33 herds have been affected to date.

FDA officials didn’t indicate how many samples they tested or where they were obtained. The agency has been evaluating milk during processing and from grocery stores, officials said. Results of additional tests are expected in “the next few days to weeks.”

The PCR lab test the FDA used would have detected viral genetic material even after live virus was killed by pasteurization, or heat treatment, said Lee-Ann Jaykus, an emeritus food microbiologist and virologist at North Carolina State University

“There is no evidence to date that this is infectious virus and the FDA is following up on that,” Jaykus said.

Officials with the FDA and the USDA had previously said milk from affected cattle did not enter the commercial supply. Milk from sick animals is supposed to be diverted and destroyed. Federal regulations require milk that enters interstate commerce to be pasteurized.

Because the detection of the bird flu virus known as Type A H5N1 in dairy cattle is new and the situation is evolving, no studies on the effects of pasteurization on the virus have been completed, FDA officials said. But past research shows that pasteurization is “very likely” to inactivate heat-sensitive viruses like H5N1, the agency added.

Matt Herrick, a spokesman for the International Dairy Foods Association, said that time and temperature regulations for pasteurization ensure that the commercial U.S. milk supply is safe. Remnants of the virus “have zero impact on human health,” he wrote in an email.

Scientists confirmed the H5N1 virus in dairy cows in March after weeks of reports that cows in Texas were suffering from a mysterious malady. The cows were lethargic and saw a dramatic reduction in milk production. Although the H5N1 virus is lethal to commercial poultry, most infected cattle seem to recover within two weeks, experts said.

To date, two people in U.S. have been infected with bird flu. A Texas dairy worker who was in close contact with an infected cow recently developed a mild eye infection and has recovered. In 2022, a prison inmate in a work program caught it while killing infected birds at a Colorado poultry farm. His only symptom was fatigue, and he recovered.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Health

Canada Falling Short in Adult Vaccination Rates – VOCM

Published

12 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

Canada is about where it should be when it comes to childhood vaccines, but for adult vaccinations it’s a different story.

Dr. Vivien Brown of Immunize Canada says the overall population should have rates of between 80 and 90 per cent for most vaccines, but that is not the case.

She says most children are in that range but not for adult vaccines and ultimately the most at-risk populations are not being reached.

She says the population is under immunized for conditions such as pneumonia, shingles, tetanus, and pertussis.

Brown wants people to talk with their family physician or pharmacist to see if they are up-to-date on vaccines, and to get caught up because many are “killer diseases.”

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