2026-06-12 General

There’s no BC-specific post this week because the province is only providing most data on the first Thursday of the month. They are still providing wastewater information — and even a bit more because of the World Cup — so I have added BC wastewater measurements into the General post.

COVID-19

COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickess

🦠 This paper from USA (2026-04-01) reports that in a 12-maonth followup period, people who had gotten a COVID-19 infection were at higher risk of other infectious diseases. Compared with controls who did not have a documented infection, people with a positive test for COVID-19 had:

  • a 17% higher chance of an outpatient diagnosis of an infectious illness (including bacterial, viral, and fungal);
  • a 46% higher chance of an outpatient diagnosis of a respiratory infection;
  • a 41% higher chance of being hospitalized for an infectious illness.

Compared to people who had been admitted to hospital for the flu, people who had been admitted to hospital for COVID-19 had:

  • a 24% higher risk of being admitted to hospital for (later) infectious illness;
  • a 35% higher risk of being admitted to hospital for sepsis;
  • a 23% higher risk of being given antimicrobials in hospital.

Long COVID

💊 This paper (2026-06-04) reports that people who took metformin for two weeks during a COVID-19 infection had about half the risk of getting Long COVID as people who had COVID-19 infections and did not take metformin.

Unintended Consequences

🐕 This article from UK (2026-06-05) says that there has been an 80% rise in aggressive dog incidents (which I think is police-speak for “dog bites”) and a 247% increase in dog seizures. The article blames the increase on 55% of “pandemic puppies” going to first-time dog owners (who presumably didn’t socialize their pups well).

Wastewater in BC

BC is doing extra wastewater measurements during the World Cup, to watch for pathogens that tourists might bring in. COVID-19 is still really low, but it’s bouncing around a little bit.

💩💧 From Jeff’s wastewater spreadsheet with data through 2026-06-03:

COVID-19/Influenza

Pathology

This correspondence (2026-06-10) reports that the risk of hospitalization from an influenza infection is now 43% higher than the risk of hospitalization from a COVID-19 infection.

Influenza

Vaccines

💉 This paper from USA (2026-06-10) reports that the 2024/2025 flu vaccine was about 40% effective.

Rotavirus

Vaccines

🎉💉 This paper (2026-06-02) reports that the global death rate of children under 5 from intestinal diseases has dropped from 3.69M in 1990 to 1.27M in 2023. While there are multiple pediatric health improvements, a lot of the drop is from the rotavirus vaccine, which became widely available in 2007. (This paper says that rotavirus is still the #1 or #2 killer in countries which did not meet the target of fewer than 20 deaths per 100 000 children younger than 5 years by 2025.) So yay vaccines!

Measles

Transmission

According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2026-06-08), in the week ending 30 May 2025, the following jurisdictions had the following number of new measles cases:

  • Canada: 11;
  • Manitoba: 7;
  • Alberta: 4.