There's actually no such thing as vegetables. Here's why you should eat them anyway
The rumours are true: Vegetables aren't real — that is, in botany, anyway.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization is now recommending teenagers with underlying conditions or at high risk of COVID-19 exposure get a booster shot.
The advice comes as more provincial health officers are transitioning to a position of learning to live with COVID-19 and loosening public health restrictions.
Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam says kids and adolescents are still at low risk of serious illness in general from COVID-19 but because of the high rate of infection due to Omicron more kids are being admitted to hospital.
Health Canada data suggest in the last week 251 children under 12 and 84 adolescents between 12 and 19 were admitted to hospital with COVID-19.
That data is not broken down by vaccination status but Tam said teenagers with two doses are at very low risk of severe outcomes, which is why for now Canada isn't following the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and recommending all adolescents get a third shot.
Just over half of Canadian children five to 11 now have at least their first dose, while 82 per cent of teens 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated. Most kids five to 11 only became eligible for their second dose in late January and there is no talk of boosters for that age group yet.
NACI's new advice for teenagers between 12 and 17 is to get a booster if they have an underlying medical condition or live in congregate settings or racialized or marginalized communities that have been hard hit by COVID-19 infections.
The booster should be six months after their last dose, and would include fourth doses for teenagers with severely compromised immune systems who got a third dose as part of the primary vaccination series.
"This is their recommendation right now," Tam said of NACI. "That doesn't mean it couldn't shift. But they will monitor the evolving evidence and update the guidance as needed."
Tam said NACI is also now looking at what to tell people about getting a booster shot after they have been infected with COVID-19, advice needed after the number of people infected with Omicron hit new highs.
How high is hard to know, because the widespread PCR testing used in previous waves disintegrated under the sheer weight of Omicron's infection rate. Tam said indicators including the percentage of tests coming back positive and wastewater tracking are continuing to show Omicron is starting to wane.
Tam said there are also immunity studies underway looking to test for Omicron antibodies in blood samples that will give us a far better picture of population-based immunity and help drive more decisions about whether COVID-19 is shifting into endemic status.
An endemic virus is one that is constantly present in an area, usually with mostly mild impacts, such as flu. The World Health Organization warned it's too early to see COVID-19 as endemic because of the widespread infection rates all over the world but Tam said she is "certainly cautiously optimistic" we're getting close.
"I think it would be great to be driven by a bit more data," she said.
Even so, many provinces are moving to lift restrictions and treat COVID-19 waves more like flu seasons. Saskatchewan moved Friday to stop requiring people who come into close contact with COVID-19 to isolate, and those who get sick will only have to isolate for five days regardless of vaccination status.
"So many of us, on any given time, are notified as a close contact and it's really not feasible for us to isolate every time we're a close contact," chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab said Thursday.
British Columbia's provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said health officials are aiming to ease COVID-19 restrictions starting in mid-February, as 90 per cent of residents aged 12 and up have received two doses of the vaccine.
Henry said more people need to get a booster shot with new variants expected to emerge as immunity wanes.
"But, we will reach a point where we no longer need public health orders and we no longer need those extraordinary societal efforts."
Ontario chief medical health officer Dr. Kieran Moore said Thursday we have lived with the fear of COVID-19 driving decisions for two years and we need to adjust our thinking now, as Omicron starts to wane.
"I think we have to start to understand we have to learn to live with this virus," Moore said.
He said a new troubling variant could upend that hope, however.
Tam said the new sublineage of Omicron, BA. 2, is being monitored but isn't currently of much concern.
She said Canada has been finding it as far back as November, and while it sometimes makes it harder to pick up Omicron on a test, it does not appear to be causing more severe illness than the original Omicron.
Hospitalizations and deaths from Omicron are still high -- the number of daily deaths averaged 168 in the last week, Tam said, the highest it has been since the early days of the pandemic in April and May 2020.
An average of 10,800 people were in hospital with COVID-19 over the last seven days, up from 10,041 the previous week. These numbers blow away the pre-Omicron hospitalization record of about 5,000 in mid-January 2021.
There were 1,200 people in ICU, up from 1,143 a week earlier. The record for ICU admissions with COVID-19 was almost 1,400 during the Delta wave last May.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 28, 2022.
The rumours are true: Vegetables aren't real — that is, in botany, anyway.
Israeli tanks seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing on Tuesday as Israel brushed off urgent warnings from close allies and moved into the southern city even as ceasefire negotiations with Hamas remained on a knife’s edge.
The Met Gala and its fashionista A-listers on Monday included Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya and a parade of others in a swirl of flora and fauna looks on a green-tinged carpet lined by live foliage.
A daily spoonful of olive oil could lower your risk of dying from dementia, according to a new study by Harvard scientists.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Defence lawyers of Jeremy Skibicki have admitted in court the accused killed four Indigenous women, but argues he is not criminally responsible for the deaths by way of mental disorder – this latest development has triggered a judge-alone trial rather than a jury trial.
The owner of three Calgary dogs that got loose and mauled a woman to death in 2022 has been ordered to pay a $15,000 fine within one year and banned from owning any animal for 15 years.
Some Ontarians are expressing frustration after they said that they were removed from their family doctor’s patient list for visiting a walk-in clinic in a process being called “de-rostering.”
Residents in Ottawa’s Elmridge Gardens complex are dealing with a rat infestation that just won’t go away. Now, after doing everything they can to try to fix the issue, they are pleading with the city to step in and help.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.