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Alberta’s fledgling COVID-19 recovery clinics are watching the third wave and bracing for their own wave of new patients in two to three months time.
But they’re not talking just about older adults with lung scarring or wasted muscles from a long stay in intensive care.
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Clinicians and therapists specializing in long-haul COVID say typical patients are 30-year-old to 50-year-old women, otherwise healthy adults who often had mild symptoms during the initial infection. Then they’re hit with a viral flare-up with symptoms of neurological damage, brain fog, a racing heart or extreme fatigue similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. And it’s not going away.
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It’s the helplessness of the victims that gets to Heather McKeown.
One year ago Friday, her mother Wendy became the first of hundreds of long-term care residents to die when Alberta’s facility lockdowns, masks and quarantines failed to protect them from a new coronavirus sweeping the globe.
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“That’s where the rage comes from, whether it’s warranted or not,” said Heather, still grieving, bewildered and quick to tears. “She didn’t go out and get it. My mom was not mobile. Somebody brought it to her, 100%, no question. It was brought to her and it killed her.
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Eight hours after getting his second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Walter Mair was in bed with the chills.
Twenty-four hours after the shot, a “nasty headache” and exhaustion sent him back to bed again. When a good friend called and heard about Mair’s side effects, he was so taken aback he mused “Well, maybe I shouldn’t get it.”
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But Mair called him right back. “I said: ‘You need to get it. OK? For 48, 72 hours at most, you might have symptoms. It’s not a big deal. You’ve just got to put up with it.’ … If you really had COVID, it would be magnified 10 times or more.”
Council eyes bigger tax-relief package for businesses in 2021 Downtown Calgary high-rises were photographed on Wednesday, February 3, 2021. Photo by Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia
City council took a step toward rolling out a bigger relief package than originally planned for 2021 to shelter businesses from property tax hikes.
A council committee approved Coun. Jeromy Farkas’s proposal Tuesday to spend $44 million to hold non-residential property taxes flat this year.
That’s more than double the $21-million rebate program council approved during last year’s budget talks. That money was meant to ensure businesses didn’t see tax increases in excess of 10 per cent compared to the year before.