5 years after start of pandemic, experts say Manitoba can still learn lessons from COVID-19 – CBC

Long-COVID treatment, public health information strategies among areas of possible improvement

Mar 12, 2025

Five years after COVID-19 was first detected in Manitoba, experts say the province still has a ways to go to fully address the effects of the pandemic and set itself up to respond better in future emergencies — from the impact the pandemic had on mental health and trust in public health information, to the long-term effects of the illness and the amount of surveillance data about it now available to the public.

While the surge in mental health issues seen early in the pandemic by some accounts later returned to baseline levels, one clinical psychologist said the data on that return is mixed — which she attributes to certain groups being more affected than others.

“We know that groups such as those who had a lot of economic instability or sustained long periods of isolation, or those with compromised health problems or chronic health conditions, were at particularly elevated risk,” said Dr. Renée El-Gabalawy, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba and a clinical psychologist with Shared Health who studied the effects of the pandemic on mental health.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/covid-19-lessons-5-years-later-1.7480941