A national nonprofit called the Canadian Covid Society was introduced on Wednesday, and its co-founders said the organization is necessary as public fitness agencies have subsidized COVID-19 prevention measures and awareness campaigns.
“I feel like we’re filling a void that public fitness has left open,” Dr. Joe Vipond, one of the company’s five co-founders, said at a news conference.
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In his home province of Alberta, “there’s virtually no mention of COVID. There is no mention of long COVID. Right now, he’s gone off the radar of a lot of the public’s fitness,” said Vipond, an emergency physician in Calgary. .
“Although the acute phase of the pandemic has passed, the virus continues to cause significant chronic illness,” says the Canadian Covid Society’s website.
COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Canada in 2022, after illness and cancer, he says.
“To this day, this continues to be a stressor for our physical care system. This contributes to poor fitness and excess mortality,” said Dr. Kashif Pirzada, co-founder of the company.
But with many Canadians unable to put COVID-19 behind them, public fitness agencies are in a tricky position, he said.
“(In public fitness) one foot is in politics, one foot is in medicine. But for now, the public doesn’t need to think about it. Politicians don’t need to think about it. And public fitness wants to respond to that,” said Pirzada, a Toronto-based emergency physician.
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The company’s project is to “protect the physical fitness and protection of Canadians from the harms of COVID and long-standing COVID education by engaging and enhancing the clinical knowledge of the public and organizations,” reads a slide presented at the press conference.
It’s also aimed at people with long COVID, which affects 2. 1 million people nationwide, according to Statistics Canada.
“We have foundations for the disease center. We have foundations for cancer, but we want an organization committed to the fight against COVID-19,” Pirzada said.
The company’s other three founders are Nancy Delagrave, a physics professor specializing in air quality in Montreal; Cheryl White, a Toronto engineer committed to reducing disease transmission; and Chris Houston, a governance expert in Bancroft, Ontario, who has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Health Organization.
The move creates a formal organization that can build on groundwork done through volunteers during the pandemic, Vipond said.
The company hopes to generate budget through donations and grants that help pay members. To date, it has not secured any investment from the government, he said.
The Canadian press has asked the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Ontario Minister of Health and Alberta Health for the Canadian Covid Society’s position that COVID-19 has disappeared from the radar of public fitness agencies.
In an emailed response, Hannah Jensen, a spokeswoman for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said the provincial government is “taking action on all aspects of fitness care and has increased provincial investment for our public fitness sets at an average of 16 per cent. “since 2018 to help them connect others to the systems and facilities they need in their communities.
“This is in addition to the nearly $100 million we have provided to public fitness equipment in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Jensen said.
The Public Health Agency of Canada has been unable to provide a timely reaction.
This report via The Canadian Press was first published on March 6, 2024.
The Canadian Press’ fitness policy is supported by a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is for this content only.
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