South Korea will no longer use GPS monitoring to enforce quarantines and will also end daily checkup calls to low-risk coronavirus patients as a fast-developing Omicron surge overwhelms health and government workers.
The speed of transmissions has made it impossible to maintain a tight and proactive medical response, Jeong Eun-kyeong, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said Monday.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 38,691 new cases of the virus — a nine-fold increase from the levels seen in mid-January, when Omicron became the country’s dominant strain. Jeong said the country may see daily jumps of 130,000 or 170,000 by late February.
South Korea had been seen as a success story during the earlier part of the pandemic after it contained infections and hospitalizations more effectively than most countries in the West. Health authorities worked closely with biotech companies to ramp up laboratory tests and aggressively mobilized technological tools and public workers to trace contacts and enforce quarantines.
But the country’s strengths have been rendered irrelevant by the unprecedented spike in infections fuelled by the Omicron variant, which has stretched health and administrative resources.
Officials had already been forced to expand at-home treatments, reduce quarantine periods and reshape testing policy around rapid antigen test kits, despite concerns over their reliability, to save laboratory tests for people in their 60s or older and those with existing medical conditions who are at higher risk for serious illness.
The plans to further ease the monitoring and quarantines came as health and public workers struggle to keep up with the near 150,000 people being treated at home for mild or moderate symptoms, which have led to delays in drug prescriptions and has paralyzed contact tracing.
Officials say public workers who had been monitoring virus carriers through GPS-enabled smartphone apps will now be assigned to help with at-home treatments. Virus carriers will no longer be required to report to local health offices when they leave home to visit doctors, while their cohabiting family members can now freely go out to buy food, medicine and other essentials.
Low-risk virus carriers, who are in their 50s or younger and have no pre-existing medical conditions, will now be left to monitor their conditions on their own and contact local hospitals if their symptoms worsen. Health workers will still make daily checkup calls to people in their 60s and older or those with pre-existing medical conditions.
“We are planning to transition toward an anti-virus strategy that’s concentrated on maintaining essential social functions while dealing with huge numbers of infections and people placed under quarantine,” Jeong said during a government briefing.
-From The Associated Press, last updated at 7:20 a.m. ET
Ottawa police are stepping up pressure on convoy protesters, seizing fuel and making arrests, says Mayor Jim Watson, but the city has also requested more police from the OPP and the RCMP. 4:52
With lab-based testing capacity deeply strained and increasingly restricted, experts say true case counts are likely far higher than reported. Hospitalization data at the regional level is also evolving, with several provinces saying they will report figures that separate the number of people in hospital because of COVID-19 from those in hospital for another medical issue who also test positive for COVID-19.
For more information on what is happening in your community — including details on outbreaks, testing capacity and local restrictions — click through to the regional coverage below.
In Central Canada, venues across Quebec’s cultural sector are set to partially reopen Monday as the province eases health restrictions put in place to contain COVID-19. Places of worship, entertainment and sports venues are allowed to reopen after being shut down since December, with capacity limits in place and proof of vaccination required for entry.
The shift came as the province on Monday reported 2,425 hospitalizations — up by 14 from a day earlier — with 178 people in the province’s intensive care units. A COVID-19 update posted online showed an additional 20 deaths.
Both Quebec and Ontario are engaged in gradual easing of restrictions, but the mayor of Quebec’s largest city wants more detail from the province on how, exactly, that process will unfold. Mayor Valérie Plante said Montreal is a “cultural metropolis” and economic engine — adding that businesses and the cultural sector need more information to plan for spring and summer.
In Ontario, long-term care residents can start taking social trips and see more caregivers as of Monday. The loosened visitor restrictions come after more than a month of strict rules aimed at slowing the Omicron variant.
Starting Monday, the number of designated caregivers per resident increases from two to four, though only two can visit at a time. Residents who have had at least three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine are now allowed to resume social day trips.
The number of people in hospital due to COVID-19 in the hard-hit province fell Monday by 75 to 2,155, according to Ontario’s COVID-19 dashboard. Health officials said 486 people were in the province’s intensive care units. The update came as the province recorded 11 additional deaths.
In Atlantic Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador officials are easing some COVID-19 restrictions as of Monday. The shift allows businesses like gyms and restaurant dining rooms to reopen with capacity restrictions. There are currently 22 people in hospital, including six in intensive care units, with COVID-19.
In Nova Scotia, there were 91 people in hospital Monday who were admitted due to COVID-19 and were receiving specialized care in a COVID-19 designated unit, including 12 people in ICU. There were also three additional deaths reported.
In New Brunswick, four more people have died from COVID-19. A total of 151 people with COVID-19 are in hospital, including 16 in ICUs, while in Prince Edward Island, there are 11 people in hospital with one in the ICU.
In the Prairie provinces, starting this week, Saskatchewan will stop issuing daily reports of COVID-19 cases, which has become known as the COVID dashboard. It will instead shift to reporting the information weekly on Thursdays.
The province announced the decision last week as part of a number of changes it says are occurring as Saskatchewan prepares to manage COVID-19 in the long term. Premier Scott Moe has said the Saskatchewan Party government will remove pandemic restrictions soon, but he hasn’t released a date.
Alberta reported39 more deaths Monday from over the past three days.There were1,542 people in hospital with COVID-19, including 118 in the ICU. Premier Jason Kenney is expected to provide more details this week about how COVID-19 restrictions will be phased out in the province.
Manitoba announced plans to expand its booster shot program to some teens, as the province reported another 15 deaths from the virus. There are currently 707 people being treated for COVID-19 in Manitoba hospitals, including 47 in the ICU.
British Columbia on Monday reported 32 deaths from COVID-19 that occurred over the past three days. The number of people in hospital with the virus rose to 987, with 141 people in the ICU.
In the North, health officials in Yukon said as of Monday, young people between the age of 12 and 17 can receive a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine, provided they are six months past their second dose.
“Immunocompromised children aged five to 11 who have already received their primary series will be able to receive a third dose,” a statement from territorial officials said. Four people are being treated for COVID-19 in hospital in the territory.
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 7:15 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
As of Monday evening, nearly 397 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracking tool. The reported global death toll stood at more than 5.7 million.
In the Asia-Pacific region, authorities in China’s southwestern city of Baise ordered residents to stay at home from Monday and avoid unnecessary travel as they enforced curbs that are among the toughest in the nation’s tool box to fight rising local infections of COVID-19.
The effort takes on extra urgency during the staging of the Winter Olympics, which began on Friday and run until Feb. 20, as well as a busy travel season for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Indonesia is also tightening social restrictions in Jakarta and Bali, as well as in two other cities on Java island, in a bid to contain a spike in coronavirus infections, a senior cabinet minister said.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Monday he wants to speed up the country’s COVID-19 booster shot program to one million shots a day by the end of the month — about double the current pace.
In the Americas, Democratic leaders in the U.S. Congress planned to hold a moment of silence Monday evening to commemorate the 900,000 American lives lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. The figure marks an increase of more than 100,000 U.S. COVID-19 fatalities since Dec. 12, coinciding with a surge of infections and hospitalizations driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant of the virus.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro has tested positive for COVID-19, she said on Sunday, adding that she has mild symptoms and will be working in isolation.
American figure skater Vincent Zhou said he has withdrawn from the Beijing Olympics ahead of the men’s singles competition this week after testing positive for COVID-19.
In Europe, Ireland will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day next month with a parade through the streets of Dublin for the first time in three years.
In Africa, South Africa is seeing more cases of the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron and is monitoring it, but there is no clear sign that BA.2 is substantially different from the original Omicron strain, a senior scientist said. Health officials in South Africa on Sunday reported 1,752 new cases of COVID-19 and 18 additional deaths.
WATCH | Experts warn about returning to ‘normal’ too soon:
Experts warn about returning to ‘normal’ too soon
24 hours ago
Duration 2:04
Various countries have started removing all COVID-19 public health restrictions and some provinces are preparing to do the same, but experts say a rushed return to “normal” could backfire. 2:04
Nigeria has received two million doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine from Finland, Greece and Slovenia, with more EU donations set to arrive in the coming weeks, government officials said on Monday. The vaccines are currently in a cold room at the airport of the west African nation’s capital, Abuja.
“This batch of vaccines will expire in August 2023. So we have ample time to administer [the shots],” Faisal Shuaib, executive director of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency, told reporters at an airport news conference.
In the Middle East, hard-hit Iran on Monday registered more than 100 new deaths from COVID-19 over a 24-hour period as the aggressive Omicron variant spreads in the country, state TV reported. The report said 104 patients died from the disease since Sunday, when the Islamic Republic announced 85 new deaths over a day’s time.
Meanwhile, health officials in Saudi Arabia on Sunday reported 3,260 additional cases of COVID-19 over 24 hours and one additional death.
-From Reuters and CBC News, last updated at 5:45 p.m. ET
VANCOUVER – A disciplinary investigation has found a former Vancouver police sergeant shared “disrespectful” commentary on a fellow officer’s court testimony about being sexually assaulted by a colleague.
The decision against Narinder Dosanjh, obtained by The Canadian Press, includes the running commentary on the woman’s testimony — apparently written by someone inside the courtroom — that calls her a “bad drunk” and says there was “no way” her case would be proved.
Former New Westminster police chief Dave Jansen, the external officer who rendered the decision against Dosanjh, says his assessment accounts for a culture of treating officers who testify against each other as “rats.”
Former Vancouver constable Jagraj Roger Berar was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to a year in jail for assaulting the woman, who can’t be identified because of a publication ban on her name.
Jansen says in his ruling, dated Oct. 11, that the comments in a Vancouver police group chat appear “supportive” of Berar and reflect “all-too-common myths” about women who make sexual assault allegations.
While Jansen found Dosanjh committed discreditable conduct by sharing the chats, a complaint against a more-senior Vancouver officer who was inside the courtroom, and who the victim and other officers believed wrote the commentary, were not substantiated.
The ruling says Jansen, who retired as New Westminster’s chief constable, would accept submissions before deciding how Dosanjh should be punished.
The woman who was assaulted was the complainant in the disciplinary investigation, and said in an interview she felt “vindicated” by Jansen’s decision because it “truly paints what I’ve been through,” after reporting a fellow officer for sexual assault.
She said many other women in municipal policing fear speaking out about ill-treatment at work, and some have told her about being assaulted and harassed but feared ruining their careers if they complained.
“This decision is important for those women to see,” she said. “It shows the tides are changing. Like, this is the first win I’ve had.”
A spokesman for the Surrey Police Service, where Dosanjh now works, did not immediately answer a question about how he was penalized, and said Dosanjh declined an interview request with The Canadian Press.
In his decision, Jansen said there was an “unfortunate but often pervasive” culture of treating officers who complain as “‘rats’, who betrayed their colleagues.”
“In terms of the messages themselves, Sergeant Dosanjh alleges that they are not degrading, humiliating or derogatory and do not attack the personal character of the complainant. I disagree,” Jansen wrote.
The decision includes a screenshot of the commentary about the complainant, who said the order of the messages appeared to refer to her evidence while she was being cross-examined and suggested the comments were written by someone listening to her testimony.
The commentary on a Vancouver police chat group on the Signal messaging app said the victim “wore a wire twice,” and “admitted in cross to possibly drinking way more alcohol than she originally claimed.”
“Her memory is super hazy and there’s no way you can prove beyond reasonable doubt,” the person wrote.
“And she admitted that she is really bad drunk,” they added.
Another message said it was a “nail in the coffin” of the case that video showed the complainant “cuddling, holding hands” with Berar.
The victim, who became aware of the commentary when a friend in the department showed them to her, was distressed by the messages and disputed their accuracy, said Jansen.
“The comments also appear to reflect some of the all-too-common myths around women making allegations of sexual assault. Some of these myths include the belief that because a victim socialized with the perpetrator, or engaged in some consensual activity with him, therefore she must have consented to the assault,” he wrote.
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh shared the messages with a fellow officer after getting them from a “VPD chat group that he claims he knew little about, from a co-worker he claims not to be able to identify.”
The decision said other officers believed the commentary was written bya more-senior officer in the department who had been present at the trial, but Jansen said the discreditable conduct complaint against that person was unsubstantiated.
The decision said Dosanjh claimed he was the “fall guy” and “a pawn in a broader game.”
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh was a senior officer and supervisor who was aware of the “vulnerability of victims of sexual crimes and of the myths that surround sexual assault victims.”
It said Dosanjh’s “distribution of these messages that were disrespectful of an alleged victim of sexual violence who was also a co-worker, should they become public, would likely discredit the reputation of the police force.”
The Vancouver Police Department did not immediately provide comment on Jansen’s decision.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
FREDERICTON – The offspring of beetles imported from British Columbia are ready to take up the fight against an invasive insect that is killing hemlock trees in Nova Scotia.
Last fall and spring, about 5,000 Laricobius nigrinus beetles — affectionately called Lari by scientists — made an overnight journey from the West Coast.
Lucas Roscoe, research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, says in the fight against the woolly adelgid that is destroying swaths of hemlock trees in Nova Scotia, the first step was to make sure the Lari beetle can survive a Nova Scotia winter.
The one-to-two-millimetre black flying beetles were released across six sites in Nova Scotia that had the woolly adelgids.
In one of the sites, scientists placed cages of imported beetles and about 60 per cent of them were able to survive the winter in Nova Scotia, which Roscoe says is an encouraging rate.
He says the woolly adelgid was first seen in southwestern Nova Scotia in 2017 and the peppercorn-sized insect, aided by climate change, has since spread north.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
Dozens of researchers across Canada, including renowned environmentalist David Suzuki, have joined a growing chorus of voices urging the federal government to halt the importation of an endangered monkey species for medical research in Quebec.
A letter signed by 80 scientists, academics, doctors and students says testing on long-tailed macaques from Cambodia should be banned due to ethical concerns and potential public-health risks.
“A decade ago, chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, ceased to be used for experimentation because using such animal ‘models’ could no longer be justified from scientific, ethical, and/or financial perspectives,” says the letter addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his environment minister and the premier of Quebec.
The researchers say they are also concerned about “the serious risks of transmission of zoonotic pathogens” that could be associated with transporting macaques.
Their letter urges the federal government to end charter flights that have been bringing the macaques into Canada, and to adopt regulations banning the importation of all primates for biomedical testing.
It’s the latest group to add more pressure on Ottawa to suspend the monkey imports by Charles River Laboratories, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant that has a sprawling facility in Montreal.
The company announced in 2023 that it was halting macaque imports into the U.S., after it was subpoenaed in a case that involved the indictment of two senior Cambodian officials over what authorities described as “multiple felonies for their role in bringing wild long-tailed macaques into the United States.”
No charges have been brought against Charles River Laboratories, or any of its officials, and the company has said it will fully co-operate with the U.S. investigation.
At around the same time, imports of monkeys from Cambodia into Canada dramatically surged, with Statistics Canada data showing a 500 per cent increase in 2023 from the year before.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, the federal department responsible for monitoring commercial trade in wildlife, confirmed to the Canadian Press that Charles River Laboratories has imported 6,769 long-tailed macaques into the country between January 2023 and August of this year. The monetary value of these imported macaques is around $120 million dollars, according to Statistics Canada.
The department previously said that officials rigorously and closely inspect imports of foreign animals, including those brought in by Charles River Laboratories, and that all macaque imports so far this year have complied with federal and international wildlife regulations.
The government and the company have both said that no Canadian laws have been broken.
Last month, the Canadian Transportation Authority issued a permit for another shipment on a cargo plane chartered by Charles River Laboratories. A flight tracker shows that a plane with the same flight number as what is shown on the permit departed Phnom Penh, Cambodia last Thursday, and arrived in Montreal on Friday.
Jesse Greener, a professor of chemistry at Laval University who signed the researchers’ letter to the government, said medical technology has developed to a point that makes it unjustifiable for the pharmaceutical industry to continue using live primates for testing.
“The government should take a leadership role and help researchers and surely the private sector to pivot from using these unethical, and I would say old and outdated and unreliable animal models, and embrace these much more efficient and ethical approaches that are … exploding right now,” said Greener, who has done research on methods to replace animals in such experiments.
“It is grotesque,” he said of the animal use. “It is time that we change the page on this chapter of terrible research and commercial activities.”
Canada banned the use of animals for cosmetic testing last year, but it is still legal to use live primates for drug testing purposes.
The federal government said a draft strategy aimed at reducing and replacing the use of animals in drug testing was published in September and open to public consultations for 60 days.
The strategy, which will be revised based on input from researchers, experts and others, is expected to be published in June 2025, it said.
“The government of Canada is committed to advancing efforts to replace, reduce, or refine the use of vertebrate animals in toxicity testing where possible,” Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a statement Tuesday.
Charles River Laboratories previously told The Canadian Press that while it is also committed to reducing its use of live primates, global regulatory bodies require drugs to be tested on animals before they are evaluated in humans.
The company said the use of non-human primates has been vital in developing treatments for various diseases and that the standards it applies in its facilities are exceeding global norms.
Matthew Green, a New Democrat MP who had previously called on the federal government to halt the latest shipment of macaques, said he has “great concern” about importing this exotic animal.
“Generally in Canada, Canadians like to believe that our government has higher regulations and more stringent enforcement protocols when it comes to protecting endangered species, yet this is not the case in comparison to what the United States has done,” he said.
Green and two of his NDP colleagues wrote a letter to three federal ministers last month, demanding an “immediate attention” to the issue.
The Animal Alliance of Canada also sent a letter to the environment minister in August, urging the immediate suspension of monkey importation from Cambodia.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
