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Although the Alpha variant is still the predominant strain in Quebec, it’s beginning to lose ground to Delta. In April, more than 73 per cent of COVID-19 cases screened positive for Alpha, but by July 18 that percentage dropped to 49.2, according to the latest figures by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec.
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“We believe the Delta variant will become predominant before the end of August,” Dr. Judith Fafard, a microbiologist and infectious-diseases specialist, told the Montreal Gazette on Wednesday.
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The variant, A.2.5, first appeared in Central America and made its way across the United States before entering Quebec. A team of researchers detected the variant earlier this year in an outbreak in a school and a long-term care centre.
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Although A.2.5 has not been classified as a variant of concern, it does possess an unusually high number of mutations, 23, including the L452R mutation that’s associated with Delta. This mutation has been shown to promote viral replication, making it more infectious.
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The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be deadlier for Canadians living in long-term care and retirement homes, particularly in provinces that failed to prepare for a resurgence of the coronavirus.
A new report by the National Institute on Ageing says 7,470 people in seniors’ homes succumbed to the coronavirus over the past six months. During the first wave, by comparison, 7,022 residents died.
By Junji Nishihata
In recent years, the concept of ‘trained immunity’ has emerged as a new area of interest. This refers to the body’s inherent ability to reprogram the innate immune cells to respond differently to subsequent infections. Where does this recall come from? And what are the epigenetic mechanisms that enable it to persist? Indeed, the pursuit of answering the questions raised by trained immunity have been hampered by a lack of useable tools to facilitate research.
The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences’ Professor David Langlais will be pursuing this study thanks to a grant from a new collaboration between the Canadian and Japanese research communities. The novel program is a partnership of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Aimed at early-career researchers such as Langlais, the collaborative research to be supported by the AMED and CIHR builds upon a far-reaching cooperation