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 2024. COVID-19 accounted for over 40%, at about about $28,500 per hospitalization. RSV and influenza (combined) made up another 51%.
Pathology
I didn’t know, but Science has known since 1962 that there are some viruses, called satelite viruses, which can’t replicate without a helper virus! It’s more well-known in plants than in, say, humans, but Hepatitis D can’t replicate without Hepatitis B! (It doesn’t have to be an active infection; Hep B can hang around in the body forever.) Science didn’t know, however, if Hepatitis D just needed some of the proteins that Hepatitis B threw off, or if Hep D gets inside the Hep B virus.
This paper (2026-03-06) reports that Hep D-like viruses (called deltaviruses) definitely get inside other viruses — and not just Hep B. They also hitchhike on rhabdoviruses, arenaviruses, and other herpesviruses! (At least, this happens in test tubes. It probably takes place in animals too, especially since Science already knows that it takes Hep B to transmit Hep D.) Microscopy has advanced to the point where they could actually take pictures of deltaviruses budding off from Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV), a virus in the Rhabdoviridae family.
There aren’t very many rhabdoviruses and arenaviruses which infect humans, but there are lots of herpesviruses which infect humans, like hepatitis, herpes simplex virus 1 and 2, Epstein-Barr virus, chickenpox, and cytomegalovirus.
I started to wonder if Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a hitchhiking virus, since so many vaccines give some protection against Alzheimer’s… but then I remembered that the pneumoccocal vaccine and the Tdap vaccine also reduce the risk of dementia, and those are vaccines against bacteria.
(By the way, I’ve finally finished my page on “off-target” vaccine benefits! Off-target benefits are those beyond giving protection against the virus they were supposed to protect against, e.g. the shingles vaccine giving some protection against dementia.)
COVID-19
Long COVID
This paper from Greece (2026-04-03) reports that they found two gene variants (SOD2 and EPHX1) which were associated with Long COVID progression. They also found that pre-existing thyroid disease made the Long COVID worse.
This paper from China (2026-04-10) reported that, among people who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 (and then discharged) about four years previously, various things increased the risk of getting “abnormal fatigue”:
- reinfection raised the risk by 139%;
- having a severe case the first time raised the risk by 55%;
- having a tumour raised the risk by 242%.
Vaccines
💉 This press release (2026-04-09) says that Sanofi is now the distributor for Novavax in Canada and “is actively preparing to meet anticipated demand” blah blah blah. (Sanofi has taken over distribution in the EU as well (2025-10-07).)
As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any Novavax available last year in Canada despite Health Canada approving it; I suspect that at least partly because the Government of Canada is ticked off at Novavax for not keeping their promise to manufacture their vaccine in a factory that the Trudeau government built for domestic vaccine production. (See e.g. this article (2024-05-24).)
Now, the Sanofi press release might be partially a way of saying, “Hey look, we are not Novavax, we had nothing to do with the factory debacle!” And Carney is not Trudeau, so might not take Novavax’s lack of follow-through as personally.
So maybe we will get Novavax in Canada in 2026.
💉 This paper from Singapore (2026-03-27) reports that the risk of birth defects does not go up if the mom got revaccinated: not with COVID Classic-based vaccines, not with bivalent vaccines.
COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickness
🫁🦀 This paper from USA (2026-03-30) reports that getting COVID-19 increases the risk of lung cancer by 22%.
EBV
Pathology
This paper from China (2026-04-15) reports that people with a specific gene allele (HLA-A*11:01− or HLA-A*02:07+) who are infected with a specific strain of the Epstein-Barr virus (85841G) have a significantly higher risk of nasopharyngeal cancer. 20.5% of the population in that area (southern China, I think) has that allele and a that strain of EBV lurking in their bodies, and they account for 47% of nasopharyngeal cancer cases.
I do not know what strains of EBV circulate in Canada and/or BC, but if your ancestry that traces to southern China and you got sick in southern China, maybe you want to keep an eye on your nasopharynx!
NB: the incidence of EBV 85841G is only about 60% in Hong Kong as it is in southern China, and apparently drops off quickly as you get farther away from southern China.
H5N1
Vaccines
💉🐦⬛🤧 This review paper (2026-04-15) reports that across multiple studies, vaccination against H1N1 influenza in the normal flu shots gave significant protection against bird flu.
Measles
Transmission
According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2026-04-13), in the week ending 4 April 2025, the following jurisdictions had the following number of measles cases:
- Canada: 56;
- Manitoba: 37;
- Alberta: 8;
- Ontario: 8;
- BC: 2;
- Quebec: 1.