More measles cases in Ottawa likely as counts grow in Ontario, around world
A week after Ottawa Public Health confirmed the city's first measles cases in six years, an infectious disease specialist is warning Ottawa residents to expect more travel-related cases.
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'I think people should be prepared for potentially further cases to occur in Ottawa. With so much international travel, it wouldn't be surprising to see further cases that have been acquired internationally or in other parts of Canada,' said Dr. Eric Eckbo, a medical consultant on The Ottawa Hospital's infection prevention and control team.
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Last week, OPH confirmed cases in an adult and child who became infected while travelling internationally. There have been no reports of any new cases in Ottawa since then and the risk to the public is considered low.
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But, amid a large and growing outbreak in Ontario, health officials remain on high alert for more cases of measles and pressure is growing on the provincial government to do more to prevent the spread of the highly contagious illness.
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On Thursday, Public Health Ontario reported 197 new cases in the past week alone related to a large outbreak traced to a gathering in New Brunswick last fall. Since October, there have been a total of 1,440 Ontario cases related to that outbreak, largely among infants, children and youth who were not vaccinated.
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The bulk of the cases have been centred in parts of southwestern Ontario that are now considered high risk for travel by public health officials. The outbreak began in a Mennonite gathering.
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The Ottawa cases are not connected to the Ontario outbreak, but rather are among 12 cases in the province since the beginning of 2025 linked to travel as opposed to domestic spread. An additional 37 Ontario cases had no known source of exposure.
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The large and ongoing outbreak of a vaccine preventable illness has been the focus of opposition parties at Queen's Park this week.
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NDP leader Marit Stiles called on the provincial government to take action to get the outbreak under control, saying she was shocked to hear both Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones defend their records on the issue as cases continued to climb by the hundreds every week.
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'In the face of the worst outbreak in decades, the government's approach is clearly not working,' Stiles said. 'We need real leadership and a serious plan to protect people.'
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Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, has said in interviews that the province will likely continue to see the spread of measles until summer.
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Ottawa Public Health officials have said they are confident vaccination levels are relatively high in Ottawa, which will help prevent community spread. Routine vaccine coverage has dropped across Ontario for a number of reasons, including the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of primary caregivers and the growth of vaccine hesitancy.
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Winnipeg Free Press
10 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Manitoba's regional authorities spent over $35M last year in the ongoing effort to keep hospital workers safe
Last Christmas Eve, a man walked into Thompson General Hospital with a loaded rifle concealed in his clothing. He moved through the emergency department and other areas — some full of patients — before taking an elevator to the second-floor chapel. No one knows how long the 33-year-old man was in the facility. He was discovered by a patient who wanted to use the chapel for prayer. The patient, hearing a commotion behind the locked doors, notified a nurse. Security was nowhere to be found. They showed up only after the gunman pointed the weapon at a nurse and fired a bullet through a window. The life-threatening scenario highlights a double-barrel dilemma facing Manitoba's health-care system: how much more needs to be spent on safety measures, which has already increased exponentially in recent years, and is what's already in place making a difference? The Northern Health Region, which oversees Thompson's hospital operations, earmarked $1.18 million for security measures last year, a tenfold increase from a decade ago. 'Our security officers that we have now are untrained, incompetent individuals,' said a Thompson nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In the last fiscal year, Manitoba's six regional health authorities spent a total of $35.4 million on security measures, according to freedom of information documents obtained by the Free Press. It's an expenditure that has been escalating over the last 10 years, according to the data received from each health authority, and includes equipment, call systems, staffing and contract costs for security guards. The breakdown for the RHAs — comparing spending in the 2014-2015 fiscal year to 2024-2025 — is as follows: • Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority jumped from $9,088 to more than $1.86 million. • Southern Health-Santé Sud increased from $336,911 to $1.51 million. • Prairie Mountain Health went from $678,485 to $4.69 million. • Northern Health climbed from $123,281 to $1.18 million; • Winnipeg RHA (excluding Health Sciences Centre) more than doubled from $5.26 million to $13.3 million. HSC spent $10.08 million in 2019-2020 and more than $12.8 million in 2024-2025 (only six years of data was provided for Manitoba's largest health-care facility). Experts and health officials say there are several reasons for the increase, notably enforcement of rules and restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the dramatic way in which hospitals and their staffs increasingly find themselves on the front line dealing with a variety of societal struggles. 'Higher rates of mental-health problems and addiction within our population have contributed to increases in incidents of violence and aggression in ERs and other health-care settings,' Prairie Mountain Health CEO Treena Slate said in a statement. As a result, the western Manitoba region expanded its security personnel numbers to monitor sites in Brandon, Dauphin, Virden and Russell. Cam Baldwin, the provincial protective services lead for Shared Health, attributed HSC's spending to methamphetamine and opioid-related behaviours and ailments, often encountered first by police and paramedics. 'The crimes that are being committed are often related to those dependencies and the resulting outcome of that is many of them need to be treated in hospitals,' Baldwin said in an interview. 'Unfortunately, that has created the requirement for additional security within the hospitals.' In February, the province installed AI-powered weapon detectors at three HSC entrances. The machines have detected 491 'potentially dangerous items,' such as knives thus far. BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS In February, the province installed AI-powered weapon detectors at three HSC entrances. BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS In February, the province installed AI-powered weapon detectors at three HSC entrances. The HSC campus also now employs 42 institutional safety officers, who are specially trained to restrain people and are armed with pepper gel. The province has safety officers — in addition to private security guards — stationed at St. Boniface Hospital, Victoria Hospital, Selkirk Regional Health Centre and Brandon Regional Health Centre. A spokesperson for Southern Health-Santé Sud said a formal security program for the region was not in place until 2019 when baseline funding was established. Prior to that, security was funded on an ad hoc basis. A representative of Interlake-Eastern Health said costs are a reflection of increasing use of contracted and on-staff security services in facilities 'where necessary.' Northern Health did not respond to questions regarding security costs. The pandemic exacerbated violence and security issues in health-care facilities everywhere, according to a U.S.-based security consultant and former security executive for AdventHealth, a faith-based hospital network in Florida. 'A lot of that was politically driven by masks and people not wanting to wear the mask, not necessarily for health reasons, but because they had a political spin on it,' Bill Marcisz said. 'You can imagine what happens when a loved one is passing away, or you want to go visit your son or daughter being born and you're not allowed in there.' Mental health, addictions and the stress that goes along with health care are all factors in security spending, he said, plus there has been a greater push for facilities to document incidents. As more cases are recorded, the need for security increases, Marcisz said. 'There's a lot of things that go into this,' he said. The president of the Manitoba Nurses Union agreed. 'The reality is that we've seen a lot of facilities that have become less of a strictly health-care facility… our emergency departments are seeing more and more individuals attending them because it's a safe place to be,' Darlene Jackson said. JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES 'A hospital health-care facility is really sort of a beacon of safety, so there are many issues that need to be dealt with,' says Darlene Jackson, President of the Manitoba Nurses Union. JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES 'A hospital health-care facility is really sort of a beacon of safety, so there are many issues that need to be dealt with,' says Darlene Jackson, President of the Manitoba Nurses Union. Jackson said nurses constantly tell her waiting rooms are used as makeshift shelters because homeless people either can't access a shelter due to barriers or capacity, or they don't feel safe. People often come in with minor ailments to exploit the health-care system's long wait times and spend the night in a secure building, Jackson said. 'A hospital health-care facility is really sort of a beacon of safety, so there are many issues that need to be dealt with. And until those issues are dealt with, I don't see how we can do anything else and just keep increasing security costs,' she said. 'The issue is not in our emergency department. It's beyond the doors of our emergency department.' Manitoba Health is aware some patients in ERs need alternative care and is working with Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith to redirect them to shelters and other organizations, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Thursday. Working with homeless shelters and non-profits, as well as building a supervised consumption site and sobering centre are part of the government's plan to address the issue, Asagwara said. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Health minister Uzoma Asagwara says institutional safety officers are on the way for Thompson. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Health minister Uzoma Asagwara says institutional safety officers are on the way for Thompson. 'Our priority is making sure that people have the ability to access the right care at the right place at the right time,' the minister said. 'We're working across government to make sure there are more appropriate places.' More social workers and safety officers in hospitals could also help address the issue, Asagwara said. Dan Nodrick, director of development at Siloam Mission, acknowledged that transient individuals are using health-care facilities as a safe haven or shelter and that the problem will persist without an influx of more affordable housing. Siloam's daily capacity is 143 people, but the organization stretches it to 147 nearly every day. 'Three years ago in the summertime there was always room in the shelter. We've been full for two years solid,' he said. The Thompson nurse and her colleagues have been begging health officials for the institutional safety officer program to be introduced at their hospital. Security personnel hired by the Northern Health Region don't have the ability to physically intervene, leaving many health-care workers vulnerable to violent incidents, she said. 'There's been many situations… security may come out of the office and ask me if I'm calling RCMP,' she said. 'It's often a common occurrence. 'With the multiple socioeconomic barriers and constraints in Thompson… personnel that can actually intervene appropriately, we may see a decrease in the violence that we experience every day.' Only a few days after the Christmas Eve incident, there was another frightening scene. After arriving by ambulance, a patient began hurling insults, racial slurs and threats at emergency department staff while clenching his fists. 'I stood up in front of the patient — I'm only five-foot-one — and I said, 'You are going to leave the facility and when you are ready to be respectful, you can come back,'' the nurse said. 'I'm surprised I didn't get in trouble with my employer; even though we have a zero-tolerance policy it is never enforced. We are almost expected to take the behaviour.' Asagwara said institutional safety officers are on the way for Thompson, but in the meantime, the province is looking at instituting a First Nations Safety Officer program, which will hire and train safety officers from the community to work alongside hospital security. 'Health-care workers should be able to go to work and feel safe and focus on providing the best patient care possible,' the minister said. 'So should patients and visitors.' On William Avenue earlier this week, just outside Winnipeg's downtown core, a security guard clad in a black-and-grey uniform stepped out into the evening sun from HSC's adult emergency department. She scanned the scene from left to right before taking a few steps to peek around each corner of the entrance, something that happens every 15 minutes. The HSC campus employs 42 institutional safety officers. The HSC campus employs 42 institutional safety officers. Check completed, she walked back inside, to a vestibule where her partner sat next to the AI-weapon detector. Similar, but smaller than more-familiar metal detectors used in other venues, the equipment is adorned with Shared Health's logo colours of orange, yellow, teal and green. Just beyond it, a metal-detecting wand sits on a desk with a security log book beside it. Signs at the entrance door warn visitors of the security checkpoint ahead. Hammers, guns and knives are not welcome inside but can be stored in provided amnesty lockers. 'Thank you for keeping this facility safe,' the sign states. Nicole BuffieMultimedia producer Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College's Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole. Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Globe and Mail
10 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Ontario baby's measles-related death highlights vaccination critical, health experts say
Health care providers say the death of a premature baby infected with measles in Ontario is a stark reminder of the importance of getting immunized to protect against the highly contagious virus. The first death associated with the current measles outbreak in Canada was confirmed on Thursday by the provincial health ministry. A baby born prematurely in Southwestern Ontario, considered the epicentre of the country's measles outbreak, contracted measles before birth from their unvaccinated mother. Measles contributed to the premature birth and death but officials noted that the infant faced other 'serious medical complications.' Public health officials and health care providers say the death underscores the risks of not receiving the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The increased risks to pregnant individuals and their babies are severe and can include miscarriage, premature labour, low birth weight and possible death. Public Health Ontario data show there have been 39 pregnant women with measles in the province since last the outbreak began last fall. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease doctor who is also a professor at the University of Alberta, said it is devastating to consider the death of a baby related to an entirely preventable disease. 'But, in honesty, as soon as you start to see more and more measles circulating, and including the fact we're probably undercounting some cases, it's not truly surprising,' she said. 'I expect that we will see more bad outcomes if we don't get these outbreaks under control.' The Ontario infant is the first recorded death in Canada linked to the current outbreak, which began last October and has led to more than 3,000 cases across the country. Ontario and Alberta have been hit the hardest and are still seeing cases surge, particularly among unvaccinated children. With measles making a comeback, doctors race to fight a disease many have only seen in textbooks In Southwestern Ontario, hospitals prepare for prospect of 'worst-case scenario' while measles cases surge Measles-related deaths are rare in Canada but public health officials have warned that the risk is growing as the disease makes its comeback globally and domestically, in part because of lower childhood vaccination rates. In May, 2024, Ontario recorded its first measles-related death in 35 years in an unvaccinated child under the age of five from Hamilton. Dr. Saxinger said one of the reasons measles has returned is because people have an 'inaccurate view' of the risks of vaccination due to misinformation. Additionally, since Canada declared measles eliminated in 1998 and case counts were low for so long, people have forgotten how severe the disease can be. She said pregnant individuals are often targeted with substandard advice, making it difficult for patients to understand how to protect themselves and their babies. While it is recommended people receive the MMR vaccine before pregnancy because it is a live vaccine, Dr. Saxinger noted that people who are pregnant can still access preventative care. There are also cases where the MMR vaccine has been given during pregnancy with no adverse outcomes, she said. Data show childhood vaccination coverage is sliding in Canada. A recent study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health found a decline in measles vaccination coverage in children in 2023 compared with 2019. Coverage for one dose of MMR vaccine in two-year-olds dropped to 82.5 per cent from 89.5 per cent. Medical professionals say the reasons behind the decline include growing misinformation online, limited access to primary care providers, vaccine skepticism and children who were not immunized during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Lynn Murphy-Kaulbeck, president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said 'no child should die of measles in 2025,' pointing to the Ontario death and two unvaccinated children who died in Texas earlier this year. Dr. Murphy-Kaulbeck, a maternal fetal medicine specialist, said patients need to be able to have conversations with health care providers about vaccinations offered during and prior to pregnancy. She stressed the MMR vaccine is safe and effective and all individuals should have their vaccinations up to date. 'We're not necessarily vaccinating for our own protection, but we're vaccinating for the vulnerable around us and those who can't get vaccination,' she said.
CTV News
12 hours ago
- CTV News
Don't know if you've been vaccinated against measles? Get a shot, doctors urge
A dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination awaits the next patient during a vaccine clinic at Southwestern Public Health in St. Thomas, Ont. on Tuesday, March 4, CANADIAN PRESS/ Geoff Robins TORONTO — Public health doctors say if people don't know if they've been vaccinated against measles, they should get a shot. Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, says people should try their best to find their vaccine records and ask their doctors. But she says if they really have no idea, there is no harm in getting a dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to ensure they are protected as Canada continues to see a rising number of cases. The exception is pregnant women, because the MMR vaccine isn't recommended during pregnancy as it contains live virus that could theoretically be transmitted to the fetus. Tam says it's vital for women of childbearing age to be vaccinated ahead of time because a measles infection can cause severe complications for both the mom and baby. She says if someone is already pregnant and thinks they might have been exposed to measles, they should talk to their health-care provider. Dr. Sarah Wilson, a physician with Public Health Ontario, says a blood test, known as serology, can be used to see if a pregnant person has antibodies to measles. 'If there is uncertainty as to whether or not they've ever had an MMR vaccine, offering serology can be helpful to understand (if) this person (is) susceptible or not, so that if they are ever exposed to measles, they can very quickly be offered something called post-exposure prophylaxis to help reduce the risk of measles,' Wilson said. But for most people who aren't sure of their vaccination status, getting a measles shot is preferable to getting a blood test to check for measles immunity, both Wilson and Tam said. That's because the time lapse between getting the test and waiting for the results is a missed opportunity to get vaccinated sooner, they said. Tam said Canada has enough MMR vaccine to meet an increased demand for the shot. As summer approaches and people prepare to travel — both within Canada and to foreign countries — making sure you get a measles shot if you're unvaccinated or unsure should be part of the plan, Tam said. 'Get ready to get vaccinated as early as possible, but I think the important point is if you really left it to the last minute, still go and get it,' she said. 'Even the last-minute immunization will offer some protection during that trip, but also it can protect you into the future.' Tam said being vaccinated against measles also helps protect others who can't be immunized, including pregnant women, children under six months old and some people who are immunocompromised. Babies usually don't get their first dose of MMR vaccine until they're 12 months old, but public health officials have lowered the age to six months in communities where there is a measles outbreak, including in southwestern Ontario. The devastating effects of the rise of measles in that hard-hit region became clear on Thursday, when the Ontario's chief medical officer of health announced a baby who was born prematurely and infected while in the womb had died. Dr. Kieran Moore noted that the infant also faced other medical complications unrelated to the virus. Tam and Wilson both expressed their condolences to the grieving family. 'That was very sad news,' said Tam. 'I think it's telling us that we've all got to be very vigilant about measles in our communities.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2025. Nicole Ireland, The Canadian Press
