Pandemics have impacted our society in different ways over the centuries. This is also the case of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which can be considered as the pandemic of the digital era. The reliance on the digital world has never been more crucial. Big data, mobile technology, and artificial intelligence have been adopted by many countries for a better pandemic management including planning, surveillance, contact tracing, testing, and health care strategies. An example of this…

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“… NOW IS THE TIME, IF EVER THERE WAS ONE, FOR US TO CARESELFLESSLY ABOUT ONE ANOTHER.” – ANTHONY FAUCI The current COVID-19 pandemic has undeniably made an impact on the health and lives of many people around the world. More than any recent global event, it has also shed light on the complicated intersection of science, politics and economics. There are so many unanswered questions at the moment, and nobody knows when the end…

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It seems like we are now living in a new reality, which has been shaped by the current COVID-19 pandemic. We are starting a new academic year that will be different from what we used to take for granted. The sense of what constitutes a new normal was likely felt by those that lived through previous pandemics, which equally impacted the world they knew. This issue of IMMpress Magazine gives us a clear-eyed perspective of…

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Dr. Rupert Kaul completed his medical training at the University of Toronto (UofT) in 1995 followed by a specialization in Infectious Diseases. After his medical training, Rupert took on a research fellowship in Nairobi, Kenya,where he investigated the epidemiology of HIV transmission within cohorts of Kenyan sex workers. Now, Rupert is a principal investigator in the Department of Immunology at UofT and the Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University Health Network…

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“They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive.” Encased in their gargantuan metal tripods, armed with both “Heat-Rays” that instantly incinerate and a mysteriously fatal “Black Smoke” like a vaporized Grim Reaper, H.G.Wells’ chilling Martians in The War of the Worlds were an extra-terrestrial force with which humans could not reckon. Yet it was a seemingly prosaic and evolutionarily ancient terrestrial creature that ultimately struck the final blow to…

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Using air travel, virtually every country in the world is accessible within a few days’ journey. Before the Industrial Revolution, these trips took years to complete. With the remarkable and rapid advancement of transportation and communication technologies, the world has been rapidly globalized ‘into one’. This has allowed a growing number of remote geopolitical regions to become interconnected with the ability to trade and interface. As a result, nations have been becoming increasingly dependent on…

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Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis may not seem like major health issues anymore, but more and more Canadians every year are suffering from these infections. Although reportable STIs besides HIV seemed to be on the decline in the early 1990s, the rates of these STIs are steadily increasing since 1997. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) reports that chlamydia, the most common bacterial STI, has seen a 16.7% increase…

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Cautionary portrayals of COVID-19 in mass media have led to a greater understanding of the dangers of a global pandemic, which has helped to reduce the impact the virus has had on populations around the world. However, this has not stopped inaccurate perceptions of the novel coronavirus from leaking into the public. For example, the current limited knowledge on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has spawned online conspiracy theories asserting the virus as a possible man-made…

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Chances are, you’ve probably looked into a microscope at least once in your life. Whether it was to look at cells of an onion skin, to visualize colonies of growing bacteria, or to determine the presence of immune cells in 5 micrometre thin sections of human tissue. Today, our ability to visualize the invisible is something we don’t think twice about. As scientists, microscopes are often part of our daily lives. But there was a…

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The 1918 influenza pandemic infected an estimated 500 million people or one third of the global population. This led to at least 50 million deaths, all by a single virus. Although the 1918 pandemic was the most severe outbreak in recent history, the influenza virus has been responsible for additional pandemics since. What made these flu viruses so deadly compared to the seasonal flu that they became pandemics?   According to the World Health Organization (WHO),…

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