Wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 involves testing sewage for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, which if present, would suggest some level of infection in the source population. In a recent preprint, therefore not yet peer-reviewed, researchers present a computational model to better understand the dynamics between transmission of the virus in a community and its concentration in the [...]
In this brief communication by CITF-funded researcher Dr Shelly Bolotin and colleagues, five key elements to achieve and maintain herd immunity Herd immunity is reached when a large proportion of the population is immune to a specific disease, reducing the spread of the disease from person to person. are presented. The authors define herd [...]
As we navigate the ongoing pandemic, the effectiveness of Canada’s pandemic response is being evaluated. The auditor-general’s report, released in March 2021, outlined challenges, missteps, and lessons learned. In a Canadian Medical Association Journal commentary, CITF-funded researcher Dr. Kumanan Wilson and colleagues, Drs. Graham Sher and Jane Philpott, react to Canada’s response and suggest [...]
In British Columbia (BC), where schools were open for the 2020-21 academic year, teachers were surveyed to better understand their perceptions around vaccination and measure their willingness to accept a COVID-19 vaccine. This study was conducted by CITF and VSRG leadership members Dr. Julie Bettinger, Dr.Gina Ogilvie, and Dr. Manish Sadarangani, and has been [...]
In their CITF-funded work, researchers from McMaster University, including Dr. Ishac Nazy, identified the mechanism behind adverse events involving blood clots associated with the COVID-19 adenovirus vaccines. In Canada, this reaction has been reported to occur in one of every 60,000 people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine. This publication in Nature describes how unusual [...]
Protection from COVID-19 vaccines is likely complex, requiring non-neutralizing antibodies, T cell responses, and innate immune mechanisms, as well as low levels of neutralizing antibodies. CITF Testing Working Party and Immune Science Working Party member Dr. Manish Sadarangani and his team provided an overview on the protective immune responses elicited by currently approved vaccines [...]
An ad hoc panel of clinical experts from the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and Australia, including CITF Associate Scientific Director Dr. Bruce Mazer, was formed to synthesize the current evidence regarding severe allergic reactions to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, and provide consensus on recommendations regarding risk factors and management of patients [...]
SARS-CoV-2 was observed to infect many mammals, including deer mice, one of the most prevalent types of rodents in North America. Scientists working at the Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory, including CITF Testing Working Group members Heidi Wood, Guillaume Poliquin, and Michael Drebot, recently published findings in Nature Communications indicating that [...]
People lacking certain immunity genes, particularly those involved in the can be more susceptible to infectious diseases. The link between this pathway and severe COVID-19 has already been established. A defective IFN-I pathway, due either to genetic mutations or to autoantibodies that neutralize this cytokine, has been shown to lead to uncontrolled viral replication [...]
As more and more people become vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, a few cases of rare adverse events, clotting-related or immune thrombocytopenia, have been reported with the adenoviral-vector based Oxford-AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZ) or Johnson & Johnson/Janssen (J&J) vaccines1. CITF-funded researcher Dr. Ishac Nazy has recently published an article in The New England Journal of [...]