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Justice Canada's website was created to provide access to the legislative and other measures adopted to protect Canadians in response to the pandemic.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. Founded in 1921, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread, influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres have dropped to minute levels. The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading—notably mask wearing and social distancing—also stop the flu. Influenza viruses are transmitted in much the same way as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and they are less effective at jumping from person to person.

On December 31, 2019 the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. The outbreak began in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China. Like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, the newly detected coronavirus (SARS CoV-2) has a zoonotic source, however, human to human transmission has been confirmed. On March 11, 2020 the WHO declared COVID-19 viral disease a pandemic. On May 4, 2023, the International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee of the WHO downgraded the COVID-19 pandemic.

Summary of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, cases following vaccination, testing and variants of concern across Canada and over time.

COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) is a respiratory illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It is very contagious and spreads quickly.
Most people with COVID-19 have mild respiratory symptoms that feel much like a cold or flu. But it can be much more serious for older adults, people with underlying medical conditions, and those who haven’t been vaccinated and fully boosted against COVID-19. Some people may go on to suffer from post-COVID conditions, known as “long COVID." This website provides information on the COVID-19 virus.

In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment. He mixed strands of messenger RNA with droplets of fat, to create a kind of molecular stew. Human cells bathed in this genetic gumbo absorbed the mRNA, and began producing proteins from it1.
Realizing that this discovery might have far-reaching potential in medicine, Malone, a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, later jotted down some notes, which he signed and dated. If cells could create proteins from mRNA delivered into them, he wrote on 11 January 1988, it might be possible to “treat RNA as a drug”. Another member of the Salk lab signed the notes, too, for posterity. Later that year, Malone’s experiments showed that frog embryos absorbed such mRNA2. It was the first time anyone had used fatty droplets to ease mRNA’s passage into a living organism.

This website takes you through the development messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) medical technology.

Vaccine safety surveillance is conducted for all vaccines including the COVID-19 vaccines under a regulatory framework at provincial and federal levels. All reports of COVID-19 vaccine adverse events following immunization (AEFI) are summarized.

October 28, 2023 As updated COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out across the country, fresh evidence confirms that the vaccines are overwhelmingly safe, with only a small percentage of people [...]
More than 38 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Ontario as of Oct. 8, with 23,002 reports of adverse reactions, an incidence of 0.06 percent, Public Health Ontario says.

COVID-19 imposed substantial health and economic burdens. Comprehensive population-based estimates of health care costs for COVID-19 are essential for planning and policy evaluation. We estimated publicly funded health care costs in 2 Canadian provinces during the pandemic’s first wave.

The Research to Insights series of presentations features a broad range of findings on selected research topics. Each presentation draws from and integrates evidence from various studies that use innovative and high-quality data and methods to better understand relevant and complex policy issues.

Keywords and Keyword phrases 'COVID-19 vaccine mandates"; COVID-19; COVID; Mortality or Death Rate, travel passports.

The interactive data visualizations that show the case fatality rate in each country are updated daily. The text of the website is updated periodically. In the last update, we replaced some of the earlier content on mortality risks by age and preexisting health conditions from before vaccines were available.

For the twenty countries currently most affected by COVID-19 worldwide, the bars in the chart below show the number of deaths either per 100 confirmed cases (observed case-fatality ratio) or per 100,000 population (this represents a country’s general population, with both confirmed cases and healthy people). Countries at the top of this figure have the most deaths proportionally to their COVID-19 cases or population, not necessarily the most deaths overall.

We present a panel dataset of COVID-19 vaccine policies, with data from 01 January 2020 for 185 countries and a number of subnational jurisdictions, reporting on vaccination prioritization plans, eligibility and availability, cost to the individual and mandatory vaccination policies. For each of these indicators, we recorded who is targeted by a policy using 52 standardized categories. These indicators document a detailed picture of the unprecedented scale of international COVID-19 vaccination rollout and strategy, indicating which countries prioritized and vaccinated which groups, when and in what order. We highlight key descriptive findings from these data to demonstrate uses for the data and to encourage researchers and policymakers in future research and vaccination planning. Numerous patterns and trends begin to emerge. For example: ‘eliminator’ countries (those that aimed to prevent virus entry into the country and community transmission) tended to prioritize border workers and economic sectors, while ‘mitigator’ countries (those that aimed to reduce the impact of community transmission) tended to prioritize the elderly and healthcare sectors for the first COVID-19 vaccinations; high-income countries published prioritization plans and began vaccinations earlier than low- and middle-income countries. Fifty-five countries were found to have implemented at least one policy of mandatory vaccination. We also demonstrate the value of combining this data with vaccination uptake rates, vaccine supply and demand data, and with further COVID-19 epidemiological data.

Published October 18, 2023 - Ending pandemics is a social decision, not scientific. Governments and organizations rely on social, cultural and political considerations to decide when to officially declare the end of a pandemic. Ideally, leaders try to minimize the social, economic and public health burden of removing emergency restrictions while maximizing potential benefits..

As we move amidst the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we have witnessed tremendous distress, death, and turmoil of everyday life for more than one year now. However, they are not modern phenomena; deadly pandemics have happened throughout recorded history. Pandemics such as the plague, Spanish Flu, HIV, and Ebola caused deaths, destruction of political regimes, as well as financial and psychosocial burdens. However, they sometimes resulted in scientific discoveries. Understanding the mechanism of the emergence of these pandemics is crucial to control any spreading pandemic and prevent the emergence of a potential new one. Public health agencies need to work on improving the countries’ pandemic preparedness to prevent any future pandemics. The review article aims to shed light on some of the deadliest pandemics throughout history, information of critical importance for clinicians and researchers.

The discovery of novel viruses is of great importance to human health—both in the setting of emerging infectious disease outbreaks and in disease syndromes of unknown etiology. Despite the recent proliferation of many efficient virus discovery methods, careful selection of a combination of methods is important to demonstrate a novel virus, its clinical associations, and its relevance in a timely manner. The identification of a patient or an outbreak with distinctive clinical features and negative routine microbiological workup is often the starting point for virus hunting. This review appraises the roles of culture, electron microscopy, and nucleic acid detection–based methods in optimizing virus discovery. Cell culture is generally slow but may yield viable virus. Although the choice of cell line often involves trial and error, it may be guided by the clinical syndrome. Electron microscopy is insensitive but fast, and may provide morphological clues to choice of cell line or consensus primers for nucleic acid detection. Consensus primer PCR can be used to detect viruses that are closely related to known virus families. Random primer amplification and high-throughput sequencing can catch any virus genome but cannot yield an infectious virion for testing Koch postulates. A systematic approach that incorporates carefully chosen combinations of virus detection techniques is required for successful virus discovery.

The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918/1919 was one of the most catastrophic events in history, and yet it has been all but overlooked or forgotten. For Canadians, the pandemic changed the course of our shared histories.

On April 16, 2003 researchers around the world established a hitherto unknown virus as the cause of SARS. The new coronavirus has been named by WHO and member laboratories as "SARS-CoV Virus." Symptoms of the illness, in order of observed frequency, include high fever, non-productive cough, shortness of breath, malaise, diarrhea, chest pain, headache, sore throat, myalgias and vomiting. Lymphopenia, elevated LDH levels, elevated AST levels and elevated creatine phosphokinase levels have also been reported [ref: Health Canada]. About 10% of patients decline around day 7 and require mechanical assistance to breathe. Symptoms appear to be worse in the second week of illness and onwards. The last reported case in the 2003 epidemic occurred on July 13, 2003 (U.S.). Healthcare workers accounted for 21% of all cases. The world case fatality rate for probable cases was 9.6%.

The independent Commission to Investigate the Introduction and Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was established by the Government of Ontario as an investigation under section 78 of the Health Protection and Promotion Act. Mr. Justice Archie Campbell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice was appointed Commissioner. The Commission investigated how the SARS virus came to the province, how the virus spread and how it was dealt with. Its final report was completed in December 2006 and made public on January 9, 2007. It was transmitted to the Minister of Health and long-Term Care on January 4, 2007.

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory disease caused by Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS‐CoV) that was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012.