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Vaccines intended for N.S., N.B. to be diverted to Northern Canada – CBC.ca

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The federal government is diverting portions of vaccine shipments from at least two provinces to help supply Canada’s north.  

Provincial health officials in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick said Friday that some doses planned for their provinces would instead go to Canada’s northern territories.

“While we know this is concerning to hear, we also understand the federal government’s rationale,” Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, said at a news conference Friday.

“It is to address the complexities and unique challenges in our northern neighbours. To do that, they need the support and co-operation of all provinces.”

Nova Scotia’s shipment of Moderna vaccine next week will be reduced to 3,000 doses from the planned 5,900 doses, Strang said. He said he also expects the province’s March shipment to be reduced.

Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said the provinces agreed in December that Moderna vaccines would be used to help deal with supply issues in Northern Canada since the storage requirements of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would make it difficult to transport and store in the North. The Pfizer vaccines must be stored between –60 C and –80 C.

Later Friday evening, New Brunswick Public Health said that province will also have some of its supply diverted to Northern Canada, but it could not yet say how many doses will be diverted or when.

It was not clear where exactly the diverted doses would be used.

Diversion may be a first in Canada

This could be the first time the federal government has diverted vaccine supply destined for one province or territory to another. CBC News has contacted Health Canada for confirmation and will update the story once we receive a response.

But late last month, the military commander leading Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine logistics said Ottawa was not considering diversion of any vaccines.  

“We have not considered shifting doses from one province or one jurisdiction to another at this time,” said Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin during a news conference on Jan. 28. 

“I think it would be counterproductive to do that in the midst of our immunization plan.

“What we could anticipate being prepared to do is adjust based on per-capita distribution at the locations that require the most future shipments long enough out for provinces to plan accordingly.”

The Moderna vaccine is being used in Nova Scotia’s long-term care homes. Strang said while the diversion of the vaccine to the territories will slow down the vaccination rollout in long-term care homes, it will not affect the planned second doses for those who have already received one shot. Nova Scotia has held back a second dose for each person vaccinated so far. 

Strang also said the province is exploring the possibility of using some Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in long-term care homes, although that vaccine’s ultra-cold storage requirements may make that tricky.  

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday that Canada will receive more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine between April and June than originally believed, and the federal government has agreed to purchase four million extra doses of the Moderna vaccine.

Strang said he expects the amount of Pfizer product shipped to Nova Scotia will “substantively increase” in the coming weeks.

“But we have to be a little bit careful because until we get actual confirmed numbers, we don’t want to count our chickens before the eggs hatch,” he said.

“It’s good news, but we don’t have absolute guarantee of those amounts. So we’ll plan for it and be ready to get whatever vaccine we get.”

Concerns about variants

Strang said staff are re-examining Nova Scotia’s two recent cases of the COVID-19 variant originally identified in the U.K. The initial investigation into those cases did not determine the source of the infections, so all the close contacts of those two people are now being re-interviewed and retested.

There is no evidence of community spread of COVID-19 variants in Nova Scotia, Strang said.

“We’re using this retesting to be extra careful to make sure we haven’t missed anything. But I have to reiterate that if you look around the world, and even in Canada, when the variant shows up, it’s very obvious in terms of large numbers of people spreading very rapidly. We’re not seeing that.”

Strang said Newfoundland’s explosion of cases in the last few days — which has been attributed to social gatherings and sports tournaments, including a volleyball tournament that involved teams from across St. John’s — underscores why Nova Scotians must “stay the course” and be vigilant.

9 active cases in N.S.

Nova Scotia now has nine active cases, with no new cases reported on Friday. One person is in hospital in the intensive care unit (ICU).

There were 1,999 tests conducted on Thursday, and 1,006 tests administered between Feb. 5 and 11 at pop-up rapid testing sites in Amherst, Cole Harbour, Halifax and Tantallon.

On Thursday, the province’s health authority reported a new potential exposure notice and corrected an earlier one. The new exposure was at the Sobeys at 210 Wyse Rd. in Dartmouth on Feb. 1 from 4 to 8 p.m AT. Anyone exposed then could get symptoms up to Feb. 15, it said.

Public Health also said it had given the wrong date when it asked people to get retested over a Halifax exposure location. The correct exposure date for HomeSense Bayers Lake at 9 Washmill Ct., is Jan. 23 between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m.

Anyone who was in the store then should self-isolate and book a COVID-19 test on the self-assessment website or by contacting 811, regardless of whether they have COVID-19 symptoms.

Atlantic Canada case numbers

  • New Brunswick reported five new cases Friday. There are now 156 known active cases in the province. Six people are in hospital, two in intensive care.
  • Newfoundland and Labrador reported 50 new COVID-19 cases Friday as the province confronts a spiralling outbreak in the St. John’s area. 
  • P.E.I. has two active cases.
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STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”

More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.

Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.

The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.

However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.

Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.

“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.

What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.

In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.

Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.

Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.

Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.

Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.

Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)

There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.

“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.

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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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World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa showed telltale warning signs before erupting in 2022

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.

That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.

Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.

“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.

Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.

When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.

The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.

The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.

Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.

Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.

Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.

(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.

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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.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Waymo’s robotaxis now open to anyone who wants a driverless ride in Los Angeles

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Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.

The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.

After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.

Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.

Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.

“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.

Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.

But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.

Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.

Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.

That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.

Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.

Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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