The Government of Canada announced on Monday that it has launched a second cycle of a national survey to assess the health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following up on an initial round carried out in late 2020 and early 2021, Statistics Canada will send invitations to participate to 100,000 randomly selected Canadians aged 18 years and older across all ten provinces. Over the course of the first week of April, the first 33,000 selected Canadians will receive a kit in the mail. Among the items inside is a link to the online survey with questions related to their general health, any chronic symptoms and conditions, their COVID-19 history and related symptoms, vaccination status, interactions with the healthcare system and medication use.
In addition to the invitations to complete the online survey, respondents will be provided with dried blood spot (DBS) test kits, with step-by-step instructions, to test for COVID-19 antibodies. These DBS tests will be used to estimate the number of Canadian adults who have infection-acquired and/or vaccine-induced antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Respondents who choose to conduct the DBS test component will receive a personalized report of their results.
The survey invitations and test kits will be administered during three waves, with wave 1 launched in early April, wave 2 in May, and wave 3 in June.
The first cycle of the survey found that few Canadians had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in early 2021.
From Friday to Monday the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 across Quebec went from 1,275 to 1,407, an increase of 132. According to data released Monday, 57 of those new cases were from Sunday alone.
Although the Monday update from public health listed Monday’s 69 people in intensive care as a decrease in relation to Sunday, the number is up by six compared to where it was at the end of last week.
The number of Covid-related deaths across the province increased by 29 since Friday, bringing the total since the beginning of the pandemic in Quebec to 14,411.
In the Eastern Townships there were 87 people in hospital with the virus on Monday, three of whom were in intensive care. According to the INSPQ, the provincial institute of public health, there were 89 people in hospital with COVID-19 in the region on Sunday, up nine from Friday.
There were no new deaths in the region, keeping the local total stable at 549.
