Health
Travellers fined for refusing COVID-19 tests at Pearson – Toronto Star
Mandatory COVID-19 tests at Pearson airport have found at least 32 cases of the virus, and Peel police have handed out $750 tickets to three international travellers who refused them as the federal government works to get quarantine hotels up and running.
The tests have been required of all arriving passengers from other countries since Monday noon under an Ontario government order aimed at detecting more contagious variants of the virus that could seed a third and more devastating wave of the pandemic with vaccines in short supply.
“Our government’s mandatory testing program will serve as a stopgap until the federal measures are in place,” Alexandra Hilkene, a spokeswoman for Health Minister Christine Elliott, said Friday.
“While we are glad to see the federal government taking action, we need these measures sooner rather than later to prevent new cases, including variant cases, arriving in Ontario.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced the mandatory hotel quarantines a week ago, told reporters Friday they will be in place “as soon as possible” in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.
Incoming international travellers — who are already required to produce proof of a negative COVID test performed within 72 hours of boarding their flights — will have to stay at their own expense while awaiting test results instead of going straight home to isolate for 14 days as they do now.
The 32 positive cases from Pearson were out of 6,243 tests conducted as of Wednesday evening, according to the latest figures available. It is not yet known if any are variants of concern.
Further analysis of positive COVID-19 tests in the province released Friday identified three additional cases of the B.1.1.7 variant originally detected in the United Kingdom, raising the number of known cases to 155.
There is one confirmed case of the B.1.351 strain first found in South Africa, in a Mississauga resident who had not travelled internationally. Health officials say there are likely more cases involving both variants given community spread. Computer modelling forecasts the B.1.1.7 strain will dominate in March.
That complicates the picture for Premier Doug Ford with more schools resuming in-class learning on Monday and the government planning for the eventual easing of lockdown restrictions on businesses, with an announcement early next week as a 28-day state of emergency expires Tuesday. Ford said reopenings will be on a regional basis, with low-infection zones first.
There were 1,670 new cases reported Friday, about half the level that prompted Ford to issue a stay-at-home order early last month amid concerns spread was out-of-control and hospitals becoming overwhelmed.
“We’re moving toward reopening the economy,” Labour Minister Monte McNaughton said Friday as he unveiled a two-year, $115 million skills development fund to help workers land jobs.
Ontario’s chief medical officer Dr. David Williams said he wants to see how the experience in schools goes first and cautioned “we’re still not where we need to be” with the 325 COVID-19 patients in hospital intensive care units more than double the level where non-emergency surgeries can be performed without constraints.
“We have to stay the course.”
Cases in Ontario, and in the hotbeds of Toronto and Peel, are now roughly the same as when the two municipalities were moved into lockdown restrictions Nov. 23.
Opening too much, too soon without widespread surveillance testing at schools and workplaces risks fuelling the spread of variants that can spread from person-to-person in one-third the time of original COVID strains and could result in daily cases doubling every five to 10 days, experts say.
“It’s a bit of a Russian roulette thing,” said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.
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There are also widespread calls for the province to require all employers to provide paid sick days so essential workers can afford to stay home if they have symptoms. Peel Region, a leading hot spot for the virus, found that 25 per cent of its cases involve people who went to work sick.
Those are the types of measures needed to safely begin reopening the economy until more vaccines come on stream, Furness added.
“We can’t just tread water until summer with everything shut down.”
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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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