There are 16 new cases of COVID-19 in Manitoba on Wednesday, including 10 in Winnipeg.
The update brings the total number of active cases in the province to 202, a news bulletin said on Wednesday — the first time Manitoba’s active case count has surpassed 200.
The caseload increase comes after only four new cases were announced on Tuesday, when Manitoba got a short break from a five-day streak of double-digit increases in the high teens and 30s.
That was the highest number of consecutive days in Manitoba with double-digit increases. The previous record was four straight days in early April.
There have now been 578 cases of the illness caused by the new coronavirus identified in Manitoba.
The province’s five-day test positivity rate, a rolling average of the COVID-19 tests that come back positive, is now 1.06 per cent — a drop from Tuesday’s rate of1.27 per cent.
The Winnipeg cases announced Wednesday include four men and two women in their 20s, a man and a woman in their 30s and two women in their 40s, the bulletin said.
Four of the new cases announced Wednesday are in the Prairie Mountain Health region: a girl age 10 to 19, a woman in her 20s and two men in their 40s.
The new cases Wednesday also included a woman in her 30s in the Interlake-Eastern Health region and a woman in her 60s from the Southern Health region.
The red line illustrates the five-day test positivity average, or the percentage of tests that came back positive for COVID-19. (Jacques Marcoux/CBC)
Preliminary investigations suggest most of the new cases in Winnipeg are related to travel and close contacts of known COVID-19 cases, the bulletin said. Most of the new cases in the Prairie Mountain region, meanwhile, are linked to previously announced cases in Brandon.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister cautioned people not to live in fear despite the climbing case numbers. He suggested that people may be more worried about new cases after the province went for weeks with relatively low numbers, including a 13-day stretch when no new cases were reported.
“The numbers themselves have been so low … it’s created a circumstance where we’re more fearful as a direct consequence of that, because there was nowhere to go but up,” he said.
Flight passengers told to isolate
People who were in specific seats on three recent flights are now advised to self-isolate for 14 days following the flight and watch for symptoms.
The seats and flights are rows 30 to 36 on Air India Flight AI 121 from New Delhi, India, to Frankfurt, Germany, on Aug. 3; rows 32 to 38 on Air Canada Flight 873 from Frankfurt, Germany, to Toronto Pearson International Airport on Aug. 4; and rows 19 to 25 on Air Canada Flight 271 from Toronto Pearson International Airport to the James A. Richardson International Airport in Winnipeg on Aug. 4.
People who were on the flights in other seats should still watch for symptoms and self-isolate if they get sick, the bulletin says.
International travellers are supposed to self-isolate for 14 days under federal rules, and travellers from Eastern Canada are supposed to isolate for 14 days according to Manitoba’s rules.
Five people with COVID-19 are in hospital in Manitoba, including three in intensive care — numbers that remain unchanged from Tuesday.
Since Monday, 36new cases of COVID-19 have been announced in Manitoba.
To date, 368 people have recovered from the illness in the province, and eight have died.
The red line illustrates the cumulative number of cases, while the grey bar illustrates daily case totals. (Jacques Marcoux/CBC)
A growing cluster of cases in Brandon, Man., has climbed to at least 64, Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said on Monday.
There were also 22 employees at the western Manitoba city’s Maple Leaf Foods pork processing plant who have tested positive for the illness as of Monday, Roussin said. Only some of them are part of Brandon’s larger COVID-19 cluster.
Most of the province’s active cases are in the Prairie Mountain Health region, which includes Brandon, and in the Southern Health region. As of Wednesday, there were 86 active cases in the Prairie Mountain region and 43 in the Southern region, according to the province’s COVID-19 dashboard.
The red line illustrates the weekly average test level, while the grey bar indicates how many tests were done each day. (Jacques Marcoux/CBC)
Only 28 of the province’s active cases were in Winnipeg, as of Wednesday.
Health officialsopened an extra test site in Brandon on Tuesday to help ease long wait times at what was previously the city’s only testing location.
Health Minister Cameron Friesen also announced on Monday that the province will soon start providing more “nuanced” breakdowns ofwhere in Manitoba new COVID-19 cases appear. That change is expected to come by the end of this week, Friesen said.
On Tuesday, 1,554 more tests for COVID-19 were completed in Manitoba, bringing the total done in the province since early February to 105,661.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
