Canada’s Covid-19 app gets tweaked, but B.C. and Alberta still aren’t buying in

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly has launched. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions.

⇒ Issue #133 (In numerology, 133 signifies independence, self-reliance, confidence, and change.)

⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 11/06: 253,482*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 11/06: 10,432*
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 11/06: 48,764,912*

⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 11/06: 1,234,742*

November 5, 2020—High-fives to all you dedicated followers of the Daily CurveFlattener—we’ve made it to another Friday. It’s Editorial Director Allan Ryan pounding the keyboard today. Shall we begin?

As it happens, the public interest in Canada’s Coronavirus notification app (at last count, approaching about five million downloads) has been much less enthusiastic than anticipated by the federal government. So, the Federales are tweaking the program, making changes that are designed to include more precise exposure information by allowing the app to notify users of potential exposure to cases from the start date of a contact's symptoms or Covid-19 test date. 

Still, the modifications have left the brain-trusts in British Columbia and Alberta unconvinced. Those provinces have not rolled out either the original or enhanced federal program, relying on provincially-developed systems. 

Alberta premier Jason Kenney says the "AB Trace Together" app is far more compatible with the rest of Alberta Health’s contact tracing system.

“We base [decisions] on their public health efficacy,” Kenney said. “Based on the advice we’ve received so far, [the Alberta app] is more effective as a public health tool. The federal app would not be connected to our contact tracing system.” 

In B.C., top doc Dr. Bonnie Henry expressed concern that the federal app would cause more concern if it was activated in the province.

“We are still negotiating with the federal government about modifying it to meet the needs so that it would be useful for us,” Dr. Henry told Global News last Monday. “What we really would like to see is an app that we could download when we’re at a celebration or a party or a church service so that we can identify those specific times when there may have been somebody with Covid who was in that vicinity.”

Did someone say parties? Let us once again turn our attention to the poor judgment of one Sam Oosterhoff, a Conservative member of Ontario’s Provincial Parliament for the riding of Niagara West. In DCF No. 128 (Oct. 28), your correspondent detailed how Oosterhoff proudly posted photos (see left) of a 40-plus member family gathering at a restaurant in Chippawa, Ont., with no masks or social distancing in evidence. 

A further investigation by The St. Catharines (Ont.) Standard newspaper has revealed that the group repeatedly ignored posted Covid-19 regulations and brushed off verbal warnings from restaurant staff that their actions contravened provincial policy. 

In a tweet, Toronto infectious disease specialist Dr. Abdu Sharkawy hit the proverbial nail on the head when he wrote: "How do we expect ordinary citizens to adhere to public health recommendations and actually commit to this seriously when such brazen disregard is on display by our elected officials who are legislating our policies? This is astounding."

Oosterhoff, 23, took down the photos shortly after they were posted and apologized. Ontario Premier Doug Ford accepted his apology and refused to heed calls to fire Oosterhoff from his position as parliamentary secretary to the provincial minister of education. Ford explained that everyone makes a mistake now and then. 

As if to prove that it’s not what you know but who you know, Premier Ford then went on to proclaim that he is beefing up the provincial Covid-19 inspection team, insisting that ‘yahoos’ and ‘bad actors’ who ignore pandemic regulations can expect hefty fines.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The organizers of the National Pharmaceutical Congress are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma

COVID CHRONICLE 11/06/2020

• A report in the Nov. 2020 issue of The Hearing Journal detailed some of the auditory effects and after-effects that patients infected with Covid-19 may experience. The article noted the symptoms such as hearing loss and vertigo may be transient or even permanent. “As we learned more about the Sars-Cov-2 virus, we had a few theories about how it might behave,” said Dr. Kaitlyn Strickland, an otolaryngology resident physician at Johns Hopkins University and the lead author of the study. “We knew that other viruses—including other coronaviruses—had been present in middle ear effusions, that viruses are associated with some types of hearing loss due to inflammation or to direct damage to the inner ear structure, and that Sars-Cov-2 was present in high counts in the nasopharynx, which is directly connected to the middle ear space via the Eustachian tube.”
  
• This new study published in EMBO Reports offers a potential explanation to account for the fact that while most people take several days to develop symptoms after infection, others remain totally asymptomatic. The researchers say that alveolar macrophages, which play a key role in the early phases of an immune response to respiratory viruses, do not react to SARS-CoV-2 in the way that they do to more familiar viruses, such as influenza.
  
  
• According to this report in Nature, researchers created an app, MyDataHelps, to evaluate the potential of using fitness trackers to detect coronavirus infections. They found the wearable devices could identify cases of Covid-19 by tracking changes in heart rates, sleep, and activity levels. When analysed alongside self-reported symptoms, more cases were identified with the combined data than using symptoms alone.

WHAT CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

As part of a series marking the 25th anniversary of Chronicle, Senior Editor John Evans is working on an article focused on caring for the changing community: How skin diseases present differently in patients with different skin tones.

TONIGHT WE ARE READING...

Apollo's Arrow: The profound and enduring impact of coronavirus on the way we live

by Nicholas A. Christakis (Little, Brown Spark, 385 pgs. Kindle Edition, $18.99.) Think the effects of the pandemic will be over when a vaccine is developed? When people wear permanent masks and avoid all societal contact? Think again—Covid-19 is already shaping society for years to come. This book, written by physician and sociologist Dr. Nicholas Christakis, explores what it means to live in a time of plague, how this experience is likely to create new divisions in society, as well as offer considerable opportunities for co-operation. Sobering stuff, but surprisingly hopeful at the same time—that’s the role of the human spirit. And that’s also part of the approach taken by Dr. Christakis, the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab.

LATER WE ARE WATCHING...

More Nicholas Christakis. This extensive interview from the Commonwealth Club of California gives Dr. Christakis the space to expand on some of his observations related to the history of pandemics and how they shape society.

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Stay in touch, stay safe, and enjoy your day. A new Skin Spectrum Weekly will be up on Monday followed by the NPC Healthbiz Weekly on Tuesday. On Wednesday DCF will be back here as Mitch Shannon brings us more of the Covid-19 news of the week.