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COVID cases are easing, but burnout for health workers isn’t Life may be back to normal for many Canadians now that COVID-19 is on the decline, but many health-care workers say they are experiencing burnout more than ever before. Global News spoke with several doctors and nurses who shared their personal experiences of burnout and what it’s like being on the front lines of the health-care system as it grapples with the fallout of the pandemic and staffing shortages that have ensued. It’s an issue that is causing concern across the country, including in B.C. this week where emergency room physicians at Kelowna General Hospital are sounding the alarm about overcapacity and staffing shortages. Global News national health reporter Teresa Wright has more on the concerns of health workers facing burnout here. 
Ottawa to cut rapid test shipments to provinces by year's end Canadian provinces and territories will stop receiving shipments of COVID-19 rapid tests by the end of the year, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) says. With COVID-19 activity dropping in several parts of the country, PHAC said its response to COVID-19 is entering a new phase. "As we approach the next phase of our COVID-19 response, we will continue to support provinces and territories by providing rapid tests until December 2022," a spokesperson for the agency told Global News in an email. Though it is halting shipments, PHAC said Ottawa will maintain a strategic reserve of 100 million rapid tests. Fifty million will be earmarked for the provinces and territories and the other 50 million will be held to address "general surge requirements," the agency added. 
Q: : Are public spaces such as gyms and grocery stores safer in the early morning to avoid COVID-19? Do aerosols “settle” overnight? The brief answer to this question is yes, but not only because aerosols do “settle” over time, says Dr. Matthew Oughton, a physician with the division of infectious diseases at Jewish General Hospital and an assistant professor in the department of medicine at McGill University. “What you want for safer shared airspaces is for fewer viable virus particles to remain airborne, and there are several different ways to achieve this,” Oughton said. Increasing the air exchange is one effective way to make shared air spaces safer, as it brings in fresh air and expels “stale” air that could contain infected aerosols. It is also possible to deactivate potentially infected aerosols by modifying physical properties of a public space, for example, by changing temperature and humidity or by exposing the air space to conditions that will kill viruses, such as ultraviolet radiation or chemical disinfectants like hydrogen peroxide. And yes, allowing filtration from gravity — where airborne particles settle onto surfaces and therefore are no longer “floating” in the shared air space, is also a way to make public areas safer places in which to breathe, Oughton said. “Of course, there are other factors as well that will affect the air quality, such as the number of people sharing that air space, their respiratory dynamics (e.g. higher risk if they are singing or shouting instead of breathing quietly), whether they are wearing masks and what proportion of them have viable viruses in their respiratory secretions,” he added. | 
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