Covid-19 News and Discussions
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Analysis: Quebec in midst of new COVID-19 summer wave
Vaccine manufacturers racing to develop COVID-19 shots to guard against the dominant KP.3 sub-variant.
montrealgazette.com
Analysis: Quebec in midst of new COVID-19 summer wave
Vaccine manufacturers racing to develop COVID-19 shots to guard against the dominant KP.3 sub-variant.Author of the article:
Aaron Derfel • Montreal Gazette
Published Jul 07, 2024 • Last updated 9 hours ago • 4 minute read
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Quebec is now witnessing — as is the case across North America — an uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations, reinforcing the notion that SARS-CoV-2 is still not yet a fully seasonal virus and sending vaccine manufacturers racing to develop COVID shots for this fall that will guard against the latest sub-variants.The province reported a total of 671 hospitalizations with and for COVID-19 as of July 5. That’s up from a low of 400 such hospitalizations on April 20 in Quebec. The number of patients in emergency rooms testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 is also rising, according to the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ).
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More and more Quebecers are testing positive for COVID-19, with the percentage rising to 12.9 per cent as of June 30, according to the INSPQ. That this is occurring during summer suggests that SARS-CoV-2 is still far from a seasonal virus like the flu, a view supported by doctors and experts in the field.
“COVID is not over,” Dr. Susan Kuo, a British Columbia family physician, told the CBC on Friday. “This is the summer. It’s July. It’s not usually a time that we’re seeing so many people that are sick. What this tells us is that COVID is not a seasonal virus.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious diseases epidemiologist and the COVID-19 technical lead at the World Health Organization, shared a similar view.
“Despite not being in the news, COVID-19 has not gone away,” Van Kerkhove declared in a post on X last month, adding that the WHO “continues to work with all countries on surveillance, reporting and risk assessments of circulating variants (JN.1, KP.2, KP.3…) and their impact.”
Outbreaks of COVID-19 are also climbing in Quebec’s long-term care centres (with 37 reported as of June 23, the latest date available) and hospitals (with 31 recorded on the same date), although the clusters are nowhere near as bad as they were last fall and winter. This suggests that infection-control protocols need to be reinforced, given that the most vulnerable are people in their 80s.
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A Quebec health-care manager, who agreed to be interviewed by The Gazette on condition that they not be identified so they could speak candidly about the issue, said the latest uptick in COVID-19 infections is not overwhelming hospitals, as past waves had. But the province’s health-care system is still fragile because of a shortage of medical personnel, especially nurses, many of whom are now on vacation.
Despite the ever-present ubiquity of SARS-CoV-2, it is killing far fewer Quebecers than ever. In the first year of the pandemic, COVID-19 claimed the lives of 7,883 people in Quebec. So far this year, it’s been responsible for the deaths of 518 people, still a relatively high number.
And the COVID-19 death toll doesn’t tell the whole picture. A new study conducted in South Korea and Japan reported a sharp increase, in people with long COVID, of Guillain-Barré syndrome, cognitive deficits, insomnia, anxiety disorder, encephalitis, ischemic stroke and mood disorder, among other illnesses. “We found that both the short- and long-term risks of developing neuro-psychiatric sequelae were elevated in the discovery cohort compared with the general population and those with another respiratory infection,” the authors concluded in the study published in Nature Human Behaviour last month.
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The uptick in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations is being driven largely by the KP.3 sub-variant, which is now predominant in Quebec. KP.3 belongs to a family of super contagious variants dubbed FLiRT, after the locations of their spike protein mutations. In a sign of how fast the wily SARs-CoV-2 can still mutate, U.S. vaccine manufacturers had initially planned a fall booster against an earlier sub-variant, JN.1, but are now working on a shot to protect against the KP.2 strain, “if feasible.”
South of the border, the Food and Drug Agency “does not anticipate that a change to KP.2 will delay the availability of the vaccines for the United States.”
In contrast, Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization released guidance in May on the use of COVID-19 vaccines this fall for high-risk groups that did not allude to KP.2 or KP.3, but it’s likely that it will in its next update. Meanwhile, Novovax is developing a vaccine that would protect against KP.3 in Canada.
“Novavax is working closely with Health Canada to have an updated protein-based COVID-19 vaccine option approved for all eligible Canadians this fall,” John C. Jacobs, chief executive officer of the company, said in a statement last week. “Our updated COVID-19 vaccine is active against JN.1, KP.2 and KP.3, in addition to other JN.1 sub-lineage strains.”
Thus, it behooves all Quebecers to continue to take precautions as authorities have largely stopped talking about improving air ventilation in buildings, which would greatly reduce the spread indoors of SARS-Cov-2 and other respiratory viruses.
Yommie
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Fears rise over summer Covid - 'It's out there and worrying' say Mirror readers
The number of people testing positive with Covid soared by more than 33% in June, as scientists say we are facing another 'wave' of infections - and we asked Mirror readers if they were 'worried'
www.mirror.co.uk
Fears rise over summer Covid FLiRT variant - 'It's out there and it’s worrying' say Mirror readers
The number of people testing positive with Covid soared by more than 33% in June, as scientists say we are facing another 'wave' of infections - and we asked Mirror readers if they were 'worried'By Freya Hodgson Online Reporter
10:35, 8 Jul 2024
Cases of summer Covid have grown by more than a third in recent weeks, as experts keep a close eye on the new FLiRT variants - and we asked Mirror readers what they thought.
There were 2,815 confirmed Covid cases in England - an increase of 33.5 percent - in the week leading up to June 19, reports the UK Health Security Agency. Many of these are from a new group of variants, officially known as 'Fresh Lineage of Rapid Transmission', which comes from the JN.1 variant.
In the week ending June 16, Covid hospitalisations had increased by 23 percent from the week before, working out as 3.31 in every 100,000 people. The highest hospital admission rate for the disease is those aged over-85, which soared to 34.70 per 100,000 following a short interval of decreases.
Latest data shows 146 people died with Covid-19 on their death certificate in the week up to June 14. This compares to almost 1,000 a week at the height of the pandemic. Prof Steve Griffin from Leeds University commented on the situation: "This is clearly early days, but it certainly looks as though yet another Covid wave is building. If the rise in hospitalisations continues, this is obviously worrying."
Meanwhile, leading infectious disease expert Prof Paul Hunter, of the University of East Anglia, added: "To be honest, you can’t really avoid it because it’s so common. We are all of us going to get repeated Covid infections from birth through to death.
"Generally what we’ve seen is that over the last three years, four years, the severity of illness associated with Covid has gone down a lot. Ultimately, it’s going to become another cause of the common cold and, for many people, that’s what it is now."
We asked Mirror readers if they were worried about the summer wave of Covid, and a staggering 61 percent selected the poll option "Yes, I am." Sharing their thoughts in the comments section, one user penned: "I’ve seen a lot more people wearing masks. It’s definitely out there and is worrying."
Another shared: "As someone with a compromised immune system this strikes fear in my heart; I had Covid last October and was extremely ill for almost two weeks. I try to stay away from huge groups of people as it is!"
https://www.grammarly.com/a
"I’ve got it now, I was fine yesterday morning, by the evening I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, had a spare test in the cupboard and tested positive. Feeling really rough today, defo still around, defo not scaremongering," a third added.
While a fourth wrote: "It's out there alright, I'm sure I have the same symptoms as I had before with COVID but not as bad ! I'm not elderly either ..keep away from anyone coughing or sneezing."
Meanwhile, 39 percent confessed that they were "not worried" about the surge in cases, as one person expressed: "We're in 2024 now not 2021 or 2020! Just a short rise in cases that comes to nothing again after a few weeks. Nothing to fret about AT ALL!"
A second voiced: "You can't control a virus, it'll do as it pleases to the body without a proper cure. It's how humans have evolved throughout their existence."
https://www.mirror.co.uk/
While a third posted: "Oh please! The country is rife with hay-fever and colds all year round! My late father used to wear thick jumpers in heatwaves, saying that he was cold. Then he always had summer colds, even had pneumonia in a heatwave too! These days that would be called Covid new variant!"
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