As far as confirmed cases of the coronavirus go, Canada has kept the amount of people infected with COVID-19 in the country contained at 12.
But in a shifting tone from previous messages, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam told reporters Tuesday “it’s likely that this virus will cause a pandemic.”
“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when,” Tam said.
“For now, the risk in Canada is low, but the risk is evolving. Concerning developments in recent days tell us the window of opportunity may be closing, but there is still much that Canada can do to delay spread and become more prepared.”
With the exception of Antarctica, the illness has confirmed cases in every continent across the globe, but with the world bracing itself for widespread outbreak, is Canada prepared?
Well, yes and no.
Experts say that Canada has all of the necessities for widespread disease outbreak — negative-pressure isolation chambers, supplies, medical procedures and assessment protocol — but hospital overcrowding remains a concern.
According to Barb Collins, CEO and president of the Humber River Hospital, Canada is “certainly much more prepared than we were pre-SARS.”
“[There is] much more analysis going on and much more standardized language and practices around protecting staff and physicians, protecting patients and protecting the public than there would have been in the pre-SARS date,” she said, adding that the protocols and procedures for containing the virus would vary on a provincial level.
By the height of the SARS epidemic in Sept. 2003, the Canadian government said it had 438 confirmed cases of the disease. Of that, 44 people died.
Dr. Alan Drummond, co-chair of public affairs for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians and emergency physician at the Perth hospital, urged against fear-mongering and said Canada learned a lot of “hard-earned lessons” from the SARS outbreak in 2003.
His concerns, he said, were with whether Canada would have the space available to take care of its infected.
Drummond said the safe occupancy rate for any hospital is deemed to be at around 85 per cent, which provides “wiggle room” or a surge capacity in case of a sudden outbreak or increased demand for health care services.
But over the last two decades, he said, Canadian hospitals have been trying to function at 100 per cent capacity or higher on a day-to-day basis — made worse in Ontario, where he said many hospitals operate at 120 per cent capacity.
When a hospital is over capacity, he said patients going through the emergency department who are deemed sick enough to require admission find themselves without beds.
“They end up spending time in the hallway in the emergency department, waiting two, three days for transfer to a ward or to an ICU,” said Drummond. “That leads to a backlog of patients in the waiting room.
“It also leads to a backlog of ambulances waiting on the offload ramp, unable to get back to the community to respond to emergencies.”
“We can’t function on a good day. We can’t function in a mild flu season. What are we going to do if there is a major pandemic?”
He said the impact of a disease like COVID-19 could lead to cancelled surgeries, premature discharges or transferring older patients to smaller hospitals with less intensive care to make room. If Canada were unable to prevent a pandemic, Drummond said, “some decisions are going to have to be made.”
“If that terrible case scenario ever comes, will there need to be rationing of care and doctors making the decision of who lives and dies? I suspect the answer is yes,” he said.
As for whether or not Canada has enough beds, supplies, or is fully prepared for a pandemic, Colin Furness, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, stressed there was no way to know if any amount of preparation is really enough.
“There are no experts in what this looks like. We just haven’t done it. We haven’t been tested that way,” Furness said of Canada’s health care system. “There’s too many variables.”
The Ontario ministry of health said in a statement to Global News they spent almost $206.8 million since 2019 to support 1,428 acute care spaces and increase the amount of spaces needed for beds in the hospital sector.
They said the province has at least 806 permanent negative-pressure rooms and 463 additional spaces that can be made into negative-pressure rooms in the hospital’s emergency department, should a widespread outbreak occur.
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, said in a press conference on Wednesday the province was doing between 30-40 tests a day, and had a lab that could do 1,000. As part of their pandemic plan, the official said Ontario would be widening its surveillance scope.
An Alberta Health spokesperson said in a statement to Global News that provincial residents can “rest assured that we are well-prepared for any future situation that may arise,” touting a recently tested a pandemic plan in a government-wide exercise last year. Since January, the Albertan government has been gathering extra personal protective equipment and planning for separate assessment centres that can test for respiratory illness.
In their statement, they said there are 374 isolation rooms distributed throughout Alberta.
The Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife has 24 negative-pressure rooms in a brand-new facility that allows the hospital to section off entire wings as negative-pressure space, as well as one airborne isolation room in its Inuvik Hospital.
Newfoundland and Labrador said all four of their regional health authorities were equipped with isolation beds and negative-pressure rooms, although they were unable to specify how many.
Manitoba Health, Seniors and Active Living said they have implemented a Canada-wide Incident Management Structure to coordinate the health system’s activities to share information and responsive techniques to possible cases of COVID-19 with all provinces.
The Manitoba government said the risk for contracting the novel coronavirus remains low, but that they are “in the process” of assessing its infrastructure to determine how many isolation beds the province has.
A spokesperson from the Nunavut Department of Health told Global News it had five negative-pressure rooms in its province, including four at its Qikiqtani General Hospital, although they said it was “unlikely” that someone would become infected with the disease.
The health department added they were performing routine infection prevention and control precautions, readied with personal protective equipment as needed.
Negative air pressure rooms, which allow air in, but not air out, are considered ideal spaces for airborne diseases.
However, Furness said the beds aren’t necessary for COVID-19 cases, as this disease is spread through human-to-human transmission, droplet and contact means. More important, he said, is whether doctors entering rooms with infected patients are trained with the proper procedures, whether hospitals have proper signage, personal protective equipment and cleaning tools.
“In 2003, because we weren’t ready, a relatively small number of cases almost overwhelmed our health system. People don’t like to say that, but it did. It came close to it came closer than most people really want to talk about, and that was only a few hundred cases,” he said.
“We’re way better prepared now.”
Furness also noted that a majority of confirmed cases are either mild or asymptomatic, which could help prevent Canada’s health care system from being overwhelmed by an influx of patients seeking in-hospital admission.
That the disease is less severe is good news for hospitals, said Dr. Vera Etches, the City of Ottawa’s top health officer. However it also means the disease is more likely to spread.
Etches said that up until now, the country has been focused on individual cases, but if there were a pandemic, the Canadian government would shift to other measures to try to slow down the transmission of the infection in the entire country.
In preparation for an outbreak, Etches suggested Canadians make arrangements to be able to stay home for at least a week, as well as childcare arrangements in order to further prevent the disease from spreading.
“What we’re trying to avoid is that a whole bunch of people get sick all at once because there’s a lack of immunity,” she said.
“Trying to distance people from one another, sometimes useful in terms of breaking that or slowing down transmission so people can work from home or people can decrease the number of large gatherings that they’re participating in. These kinds of things can slow down transmission.”
© 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
KAMLOOPS, B.C. – A 35-year-old man has been charged with second-degree murder after his mother’s body was found near her Kamloops, B.C., home a year ago.
Mounties say 57-year-old Jo-Anne Donovan was found dead about a week after she had been reported missing.
RCMP says its serious crime unit launched an investigation after the body was found.
Police say they arrested Brandon Donovan on Friday after the BC Prosecution Service approved the charge.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
TORONTO – Strength in the base metal and technology sectors helped Canada’s main stock index gain almost 100 points on Friday, while U.S. stock markets climbed to their best week of the year.
“It’s been almost a complete opposite or retracement of what we saw last week,” said Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at IG Wealth Management.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 297.01 points at 41,393.78. The S&P 500 index was up 30.26 points at 5,626.02, while the Nasdaq composite was up 114.30 points at 17,683.98.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 93.51 points at 23,568.65.
While last week saw a “healthy” pullback on weaker economic data, this week investors appeared to be buying the dip and hoping the central bank “comes to the rescue,” said Petursson.
Next week, the U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its key interest rate for the first time in several years after it significantly hiked it to fight inflation.
But the magnitude of that first cut has been the subject of debate, and the market appears split on whether the cut will be a quarter of a percentage point or a larger half-point reduction.
Petursson thinks it’s clear the smaller cut is coming. Economic data recently hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been that bad either, he said — and inflation may have come down significantly, but it’s not defeated just yet.
“I think they’re going to be very steady,” he said, with one small cut at each of their three decisions scheduled for the rest of 2024, and more into 2025.
“I don’t think there’s a sense of urgency on the part of the Fed that they have to do something immediately.
A larger cut could also send the wrong message to the markets, added Petursson: that the Fed made a mistake in waiting this long to cut, or that it’s seeing concerning signs in the economy.
It would also be “counter to what they’ve signaled,” he said.
More important than the cut — other than the new tone it sets — will be what Fed chair Jerome Powell has to say, according to Petursson.
“That’s going to be more important than the size of the cut itself,” he said.
In Canada, where the central bank has already cut three times, Petursson expects two more before the year is through.
“Here, the labour situation is worse than what we see in the United States,” he said.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.61 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The October crude oil contract was down 32 cents at US$68.65 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down five cents at US$2.31 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$30.10 at US$2,610.70 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents US$4.24 a pound.
— With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida State has asked a judge to decide key parts of its lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference without a trial, hoping for a quicker resolution and path to a possible exit from the league.
Florida State requested a partial summary judgment from Circuit Judge John Cooper in a 574-page document filed earlier this week in Leon County, the Tallahassee-based school’s home court.
Florida State sued the ACC in December, challenging the validity of a contract that binds member schools to the conference and each other through media rights and claiming the league’s exit fees and penalties for withdrawal are exorbitant and unfair.
In its original compliant, Florida State said it would cost the school more than half a billion dollars to break the grant of rights and leave the ACC.
“The recently-produced 2016 ESPN agreements expose that the ACC has no rights to FSU home games played after it leaves the conference,” Florida State said in the filing.
Florida State is asking a judge to rule on the exit fees and for a summary judgment on its breach of contract claim, which says the conference broke its bylaws when it sued the school without first getting a majority vote from the entire league membership.
The case is one of four active right now involving the ACC and one of its members.
The ACC has sued Florida State in North Carolina, claiming the school is breaching a contract that it has signed twice in the last decade simply by challenging it.
The judge in Florida has already denied the ACC’s motion to dismiss or pause that case because the conference filed first in North Carolina. The conference appealed the Florida decision in a hearing earlier this week.
Clemson is also suing the ACC in South Carolina, trying to find an affordable potential exit, and the conference has countersued that school in North Carolina, too.
Florida State and the ACC completed court-mandated mediation last month without resolution.
The dispute is tied to the ACC’s long-term deal with ESPN, which runs through 2036, and leaves those schools lagging well behind competitors in the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten when it comes to conference-payout revenue.
Florida State has said the athletic department is in danger of falling behind by as much as $40 million annually by being in the ACC.
“Postponing the resolution of this question only compounds the expense and travesty,” the school said in the latest filing.
The ACC has implemented a bonus system called a success initiative that will reward schools for accomplishments on the field and court, but Florida State and Clemson are looking for more as two of the conference’s highest-profile brands and most successful football programs.
The ACC evenly distributes revenue from its broadcast deal, though new members California, Stanford and SMU receive a reduced and no distribution. That money is used to fund the pool for the success initiative.
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