Hospital System I missed it when it came out, but as this press release (2025-12-05) describes, the province is going to centralize certain health care administration tasks. Instead of each Health Authority having their own legal, supply chain, finance and human resources, those are all going to be consolidated into one standalone shared services organization,… Continue reading 2026-04-24 BC
2026-04-24 General
COVID-19 Long COVID This long article (2026-04-21) on transauricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) talks a little bit about how some long haulers experimenting with (non-approved) taVNS self-treatment have found relief from taVNS, but the article talks even more about how it has negative effects for some long haulers. (TL;DR: be careful about your experimenting with… Continue reading 2026-04-24 General
2026-04-18 BC
Health Care System This press release (2026-04-01) from the Ministry of Health says that BC has successfully poached hired 500 health care workers from the USA by now. It also says that: The province has also recently opened new urgent/primary care centres in PoCo (2026-03-18), UBC (2026-03-30), and Surrey (2026-04-10). Charts From the Viral Respiratory… Continue reading 2026-04-18 BC
2026-04-18 General
Multiple Pathogens Hospitals This article (2026-04-16) about this report (2026-04-16) says that the number of hospitalizations for vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases for Canadians more than doubled between 2019 and 2024, from 66 per 100,000 to 142 per 100,000. (BC had 125 vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases per 100,000 in 2024.) There were almost 60,000 vaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations in… Continue reading 2026-04-18 General
2026-04-10 BC
COVID-19 Vaccines Other provinces have announced the particulars of their Spring 2026 COVID-19 vaccination campaign, but BC has not said anything yet. Last year, this press release (2025-03-28) announced that the spring campaign would start on 8 April 2025. This year, crickets so far. This article (2026-04-10) reports that childhood vaccination rates have been dropping… Continue reading 2026-04-10 BC
2026-04-10 General
Multiple Pathogens 💊 Metformin seems to be a bit of a wonder drug. It helps Type 2 diabetics, people with polycystic ovary syndrome, and it inhibits weight gain. Studies of using metformin to treat or prevent COVID-19 and Long COVID are mixed, but on balance it tends to help, and it helps some groups with… Continue reading 2026-04-10 General
2026-04-03 BC
Charts From the Viral Respiratory Outcomes page (updated 2 April 2026 with data through 28 Feb 2026). From the Viral Pathogen Characterization page: COVID-19 and parainfluenza stayed stable; everything else fell. In the most recent data (ending 28 March 2026) as reported on 2 April 2026, among influenza-like illness (i.e respiratory diseases) cases that the… Continue reading 2026-04-03 BC
2026-04-03 General
COVID-19 Treatments 🎉 This paper from Israel (2026-03-25) reports that they’ve isolated a monoclonal antibody from recovered COVID-19 patients which works against all variants known so far! The antibody works against a highly-conserved area, and makes the top part of the spike fall off prematurely. Without the top part, the virus can’t dock with the… Continue reading 2026-04-03 General
2026-03-27 BC
Mitigation Measures This article (2026-03-23) reports that most Canadians thought the federal government did a good job on the pandemic. 67% of people in BC thought that the province did a good job. I would agree. Just about everybody (including me) is mad at the province’s Ministry of Health for one thing or another, but… Continue reading 2026-03-27 BC
2026-03-27 General
Multiple Pathogens Pathology This paper from Ontario (2026-03-22) reports, to put it bluntly, that the “immunity debt” theory is hogwash. (The immunity debt theory says that the immune system is like a muscle, and requires exercise to stay in top form so when lockdown reduced exposure to pathogens, the immune system “got out of shape”.)… Continue reading 2026-03-27 General