The highly contagious delta variant, which was first discovered in India in late 2020, has spread around the world and now accounts for the majority of cases in Canada and various other countries. So why is this particular variant advancing so rapidly?
The war against COVID-19 has changed because of the highly contagious delta variant, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said, proposing a clearer message, mandatory vaccines for health workers and a return to universal masking.
Many Alberta doctors are reacting with surprise and disappointment to the province's plan to relax its COVID-19 surveillance and management system despite an increase in case numbers, the positivity rate and R-value, and vaccination rates that are lagging behind other provinces.
New evidence showing the delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox has prompted U.S. health officials to consider changing advice on how the country fights the coronavirus.
Here’s the latest on which vaccines distributed in Canada might cause problems for travellers abroad.
Climate change is expected to lead to a rise in the number of wildfires, which pose health dangers due to smoke inhalation. But there are also other risks to consider, such as the impact on mental health and clean water supplies.
Alberta parents are questioning the safety of sending unvaccinated children back to school without pandemic restrictions in place. On Aug. 16, mask mandates on transit, will be lifted and isolation will no longer be required for the majority of positive COVID-19 cases.
Ontario medical experts are sounding the alarm over Alberta's recent decision to significantly ease its COVID-19 restrictions, warning the move could cause ripple effects across the country — and the globe.
Israel's prime minister on Thursday announced that the country would offer a coronavirus booster to people over 60 who have already been vaccinated. The announcement by Naftali Bennett makes Israel the first country to offer a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to its citizens on a wide scale.
The chief coroner in B.C. has confirmed the majority of people who died suddenly during the week of June's record-breaking heat wave passed away as a direct result of the extreme temperatures.
Thirteen more cases of COVID-19 have been linked to the Calgary Stampede and doctors say the full repercussions of the event likely won't be known for weeks.
Peel Public Health's medical officer Dr. Lawrence Loh says all of the recent hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients in Peel have been among people who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.
Australia's biggest city Sydney posted a record one-day rise in local COVID-19 cases on Thursday and warned the outbreak would get worse, as authorities sought military help to enforce a lockdown of six million people poised to enter its sixth week.
Albertans who test positive for COVID-19 will no longer be required to enter isolation starting in less than three weeks, the province's chief medical officer of health said Wednesday.
The B.C. government announced 185 new cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths on Wednesday, the highest number of new daily cases since June 5.
Health authorities in Thailand are racing to set up a large field hospital in a cargo building at one of Bangkok's airports as the country reports record numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths. Here's what you need to know now about the pandemic in Canada and around the world.
AstraZeneca said Thursday that it intends to seek U.S. authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine in the second half of this year, offering a new timetable for the much-delayed application.
In the past three weeks, the number of daily COVID-19 cases in British Columbia have tripled, while the delta variant has grown to become the most dominant strain in the province.
The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says new mask-wearing guidance, coupled with higher rates of vaccination against COVID-19, could halt the current escalation of infections in "a couple of weeks."
The decision of U.S. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles to withdraw from the women's team final to look after her mental health could go a long way toward dispelling stigmas around the issue in sports, experts said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reversed course on its recommendations around mask-wearing and now says that in areas of high COVID-19 transmission rates, even fully vaccinated Americans should wear masks in public indoor settings to prevent the spread of the delta variant.
Canada will have enough doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to fully inoculate all those 12 and over — a milestone the government originally had planned to reach this September.
A group of patients question why their applications for an exemption to use psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in what are commonly called magic mushrooms, for therapeutic purposes have gone unanswered by Health Canada.
Tokyo reported its highest number of new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, days after the Olympics began. The Japanese capital reported 2,848 new COVID-19 cases, exceeding the earlier record of 2,520 cases on Jan. 7.
The Quebec government says fully vaccinated residents who have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine can receive a third dose of an mRNA vaccine before travelling — but health officials are warning that it's up to the recipient to seek their own advice.
Ontario has asked the federal government to ensure Canadians who received mixed COVID-19 vaccines will be cleared for international travel as border measures lift.
Vaccine hesitancy in Alberta is about twice the national average. Here's how some Alberta businesses and community organizations are making COVID-19 vaccines more accessible and convincing the hesitant to roll up their sleeves.
Moderna is in talks with U.S. regulators to expand the size of an ongoing trial testing its COVID-19 vaccines in children aged between 5 and 11, the drugmaker said on Monday.
New York City will require all of its municipal workers — including teachers and police officers — to get coronavirus vaccines by mid-September or face weekly COVID-19 testing, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.
The World Bank and the COVAX global vaccine distribution program unveiled on Monday a financing mechanism to speed the supply of doses to developing countries, where COVID-19 inoculation rates lag far behind those of richer nations.
Thailand reported a record number of coronavirus cases on Monday, while Malaysia has notched up more than one million infections, as the virulent delta variant carves a deadly path through Southeast Asia — now a global epicentre for the virus.
Experts say there is great demand for culturally specific long-term care homes, yet there are not enough to serve the needs of Greater Toronto Area's diverse older adult population.
An impressive 80 per cent of eligible Canadians have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That statistic points to a troubling fact, however: more than six million Canadians still haven't had a shot — at a time when experts say we urgently need more coverage to beat back a surge of cases in the fall.
Canada will likely face a fourth wave of the pandemic as the highly contagious delta variant continues to spread ahead of borders and schools reopening, but there’s growing optimism another surge won’t bring the country back to a crisis point.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Sydney and other Australian cities on Saturday to protest pandemic lockdown restrictions, and police made multiple arrests after crowds broke through barriers and threw plastic bottles and potted plants.
Understaffing and burnout among personal support workers (PSWs) in the Hamilton area started well before the pandemic, but has been exacerbated by its demands. Many also feel there's a lack of respect for the profession.
The British government has sought to ease food supply pressures in England by exempting certain workers from quarantine rules.
As Earth warms, Canada is facing not only more frequent heat waves, but higher nighttime temperatures. That combination is potentially deadly.
Two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca-Oxford's COVID-19 vaccines are nearly as effective against the highly transmissible delta coronavirus variant as they are against the previously dominant alpha variant, a new study shows.
The debate over mandatory COVID-19 vaccines for health-care workers is growing louder in Canada as more countries move forward with the controversial approach to safeguard health-care settings and fight the spread of more contagious variants.
China cannot accept the World Health Organization's plan for the second phase of a study into the origins of COVID-19, a senior Chinese health official said Thursday.
The World Health Organization on Thursday urged Indonesia to implement a stricter and wider lockdown to combat surging COVID-19 infections and deaths, just days after the country's president flagged the easing of restrictions.
A rising R-value for COVID-19 in Alberta coupled with a stubborn and country-leading rate of vaccine hesitancy are two signs that the province’s battle to beat back the pandemic still has hurdles to overcome, says a Calgary infectious diseases expert.
A new website that was set up to provide Ontarians with a list of businesses with fully vaccinated staff or that require customers to show proof of vaccination has shut down, citing online attacks from a small contingent of anti-vaxxers.
Canada's demand for COVID-19 vaccines is slowly dropping, experts say, and they warn those waiting to see whether cases spike before getting their jabs are wasting time the body needs to build sufficient immunity.
U.S. life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the largest one-year decline since the Second World War, public health officials said Wednesday. The decrease for both Black Americans and Hispanic Americans was even worse.
The percentage of people vaccinated with a first dose has remained in the low 70s since last month, leaving infectious disease experts concerned it won’t be enough to protect the province from the more contagious delta variant.
Tokyo's COVID-19 infections hit a six-month high Wednesday with the Olympic host city logging 1,832 new cases just two days before the Games open. The update came as the WHO chief noted that the Games shouldn't be judged by case numbers but by how cases are handled once they are identified.
COVID-19 cases among Olympic delegates are on the rise and roughly 15 per cent of those staying on site are unvaccinated, prompting warnings from medical experts about potential ripple effects if the world’s largest sporting event doesn’t clamp down on virus transmission.
The vast majority of new COVID-19 cases in Spain in the past five weeks were detected among non-vaccinated people, Health Minister Carolina Darias said on Monday, as new infections rose by 27,286.
India's excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic were a staggering 10 times the official death toll, according to the most comprehensive research done to date.
Mississippi's top public health official says the state is seeing a rapid increase in coronavirus infections, noting on Twitter that the "4th wave is here."
