More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
Federal agencies are trying to get a handle on how many Canadians may be suffering from long COVID as researchers learn more about the mysterious after-effects of the virus.
The Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada have launched a survey to try to get a broad idea of how common it is for people to feel lingering effects after COVID-19 infection, which can be difficult to identify and even harder to track.
“We probably anticipate that the impact of long COVID is going to be quite substantial,” chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said at a media briefing Friday.
Relatively little is known about the effects of long COVID, also known as post-COVID-19 condition, including how to diagnose it, how long it lasts or how best to treat it.
It can affect people who were hit hard by their initial COVID-19 symptoms, but it's also been noted in people who had hardly any COVID-19 symptoms at all.
The public health agency says there have been reports of more than 100 potential symptoms associated with the condition.
The most common ones, according to PHAC, include fatigue, memory problems, anxiety, depression and even post-traumatic stress disorder.
The wide array of symptoms, coupled with the fact that few jurisdictions provide documented COVID-19 tests, make it difficult to know how many people are still suffering the effects of an infection.
Early indications from the World Health Organization showed 10 to 20 per cent of people infected with the virus would go on to have symptoms of long COVID. Tam said more up-to-date research indicates it could actually be as high as 50 per cent.
“Long COVID symptoms can be quite broad and non-specific, and so depending on the questions and the questionnaire, you might elicit different answers,” Tam said of the complexity of nailing down long COVID cases.
The survey will hopefully give public health officials a broad understanding of how many people are dealing with long COVID and could even help nail down whether certain geographic areas or segments of the population are being hit harder, she said.
The federal government will also look at information gathered from provincial health systems as well as clinics that have been established to specifically deal with long COVID cases.
Tam said there's emerging evidence that COVID-19 vaccines offer some protection against long COVID, but those studies are still ongoing, and the best way to avoid long-COVID is to avoid catching COVID-19 altogether.
The number of new cases appears to be trending down, Tam said, though the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 remains high in some parts of the country.
The federal government dedicated $20 million over the next five years in its latest budget to support research into the long-term effects of COVID-19 infections, as well as wider impacts of the virus on health and health-care systems.
One of the things researchers are looking for is a better way to diagnose the nebulous condition.
Tam said the survey may give public health officials a better understanding of antibody data, which may even lead to better diagnostic tools for past COVID-19 infection and long COVID.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 6, 2022.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”