Over the past year and a half we have faced an
extraordinary threat together. COVID-19 has required
unprecedented measures that have saved lives and
prevented our health care system from being overwhelmed.
We will not eliminate COVID-19 which means we need to learn how to live with it.
This is why we have begun to shift our COVID-19 approach towards
an enhanced version of the solid foundation
of our systems to manage other respiratory viruses.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a reduction in childhood immunizations across Canada as people kept their children home
to adhere to COVID-19 restrictions and school-based immunization programs
were interrupted. For example, In 2019, 73% of 12 year olds in Alberta were fully immunized for Hepatitis B.
This dropped to just 28% in 2020.
Catching up with routine childhood immunizations is
a key priority for protecting children.
Measures needed to manage COVID-19 transmission have had impacts
on our population’s mental health and wellbeing.
Social isolation measures have worsened mental health
in those already most at risk while also limiting access to supports
over half of those surveyed reported not staying as
socially connected as they were before the pandemic,
almost one third of participants indicated that they had
delayed seeking health care during the pandemic
nearly 70% of participants reported feeling more stressed
out during the pandemic with factors including difficulty
maintaining relationships, difficulty sleeping, inability to
exercise and lonelines
What is an endemic?
Endemic is an adjective that means natural to, native to, confined to
or widespread within a place or population of people.
Endemic is perhaps most commonly used to describe a disease
that is prevalent in or restricted to a particular location, region, or population. For example, malaria is said to be endemic to tropical regions.
In this context, it can also be used as a noun:
an endemic disease can simply be called an endemic.
When considering the impacts of case detection from widely available PCR
testing and contact tracing, we looked at data from monthly blood sample
antibody tests done over the course of the pandemic ~
These showed our PCR testing program detected only about 1 of every 4 cases
when compared with antibody testing
(when taking waning antibody levels into account)