Canada hit another grim milestone in the COVID-19 crisis today, with the number of deaths exceeding 3,000. As of early evening, there were 3,133 deaths, and 51,597 cases.
The news came just after Manitoba became the latest province to release details on how it plans to lift COVID-19 restrictions and restart some sectors of the economy, with Premier Brian Pallister saying people will be dealing with a new normal as officials try to prevent a “COVID comeback.”
Pallister said some restrictions will be lifted beginning May 4. Non-urgent health care, ranging from dentistry and physiotherapy to elective surgery, will be allowed to operate again. Rules around outdoor recreation will also be loosened, though physical distancing will still be important, the premier said.
Some retail businesses — including clothing stores, restaurant patios and hair salons — will also be allowed to reopen.
“We must remain vigilant, and we must remain committed — we do not want a COVID comeback.”
In all cases, Pallister said, businesses will need to follow public health guidelines and ensure a safe experience for both staff and customers.
WATCH | Manitoba premier details reopening plans:
Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister outlines the province’s reopening plan which is set to begin May 4. 1:18
Pallister said health officials may look at the cap on group gatherings, but he cautioned that large-scale events like festivals and concerts aren’t likely anytime soon.
As for schools, Pallister said Manitoba is in the “early days” of the COVID-19 recovery and the presence of a large number of kids in a school makes social distancing a challenge. The province “isn’t entertaining” the idea of opening schools at this time, he said.
The second phase, which would include more personal services and indoor dining rooms, doesn’t have a firm date attached, but the province said it would be no sooner than June 1.
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces take part in a training session before deploying to seniors residences Wednesday in Montreal. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)
Pallister’s move came a day after Quebec announced that some businesses in the hard-hit province will be reopening in May, with Premier François Legault saying the challenge is to “gradually restart the economy without restarting the pandemic.”
Canada has more than 50,000 confirmed and presumptive coronavirus cases, with more than 3,000 COVID-19-related deaths, according to a CBC News tally based on provincial data, local health information and CBC’s reporting. Quebec accounts for 26,594 of the cases and 1,761 deaths.
Legault outlined a plan that would allow some retail, construction and manufacturing operations to resume at some point next month. But the premier emphasized that the reopening of some businesses doesn’t mean that people should be congregating in groups or ignoring public health guidelines.
He also stressed the importance of continuing to protect the vulnerable, particularly those living in the province’s long-term care homes, which have seen devastating and deadly outbreaks.
At their daily briefing Wednesday, federal health officials stressed that the virus is still spreading, and that people need to keep following the guidelines for lowering the risk, such as physical distancing and hand washing.
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam also urged workplaces to have “good plans” for when they start to reopen and employees return.
WATCH | ‘We need to do better,’ says Dr. Theresa Tam:
Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam says the COVID-19 virus has pointed out deficiencies in workplaces’ health and safety practices. 1:38
Prince Edward Island, which has just 27 cases (with 24 considered recovered) also outlined its initial reopening plan on Tuesday. The small province is taking a phased approach — and like Saskatchewan and Quebec, it has attached specific dates to some early stages.
On May 1, P.E.I. will allow non-urgent health care to resume, a move that covers everything from cancer screenings to optometrist visits. There will also be some loosening of social restrictions, as non-related groups of up to five people will be allowed to visit — provided they are outside and at least two metres apart.
Phase 2, which allows small indoor and slightly larger outdoor gatherings, as well as more business openings, is set for May 22. Phase 3, which allows even larger gatherings and reopens some personal services, recreation facilities and restaurants in a limited way, is set for June 12. There’s no date attached to Phase 4, which the province describes as the “new normal” for P.E.I.
“We need to be cautious, we need to be careful and we need to be methodical,” P.E.I. Premier Dennis King said. “There are no programs to bring people back from the dead.”
“Some of this we’re going to have to make final decisions as we get closer to them, based on how well we do,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Tuesday. “But I do hope that we will be able to begin reopening aspects of social and economic life that have currently been suspended in the month of May.”
Ontario’s recently revealed plan has a detailed framework outlining what needs to happen before restrictions can be lifted, but Premier Doug Ford has repeatedly described the plan as a roadmap, not a calendar.
WHO defends its response
The novel coronavirus, which was first reported in China in late 2019, causes an illness called COVID-19. Health officials have said most people who contract the virus experience mild to moderate symptoms, but have cautioned that older people and those with underlying health issues face a greater risk of severe illness or death.
There are no proven treatments or vaccines for the virus, though teams of researchers around the world are frantically working to find answers.
The chief of the World Health Organization on Wednesday defended the agency’s response to the coronavirus in a news briefing, saying it had acted “quickly and decisively.”
The Geneva-based UN body has faced mounting criticism in recent weeks, especially from top donor the United States, which has cut off funding.
“From the beginning, the WHO has acted quickly and decisively to respond to warn the world,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after giving a timeline of what the body knew in the lead-up to declaring COVID-19 a global emergency on Jan. 30.
WATCH | ‘We sounded the alarm early and we sounded it often’:
The World Health Organization continues to explain its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it has kept the world informed in multiple ways. 5:33
As of 9:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, there were nearly 3.2 million known cases of the coronavirus around the world, with more than 227,000 deaths, according to a case-tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
Read on for a look at what’s happening in the provinces and territories, the U.S. and around the world.
Ontario is expanding eligibility for child care in the province. Education Minister Steven Lecce says along with front-line health-care workers, people who work in grocery stores and pharmacies, retirement homes, as well as truckers and other essential workers, may now access child care. Read more about what’s happening in Ontario.
Quebec is getting another 400 soldiers to help out in the province’s overburdened long-term care homes. The soldiers are in addition to those who have been working in the province since April 20. More than 60 per cent of the province’s deaths have occurred in care homes, where absences and illnesses due to COVID-19 have worsened pre-existing understaffing issues. Read more about what’s happening in Quebec, including a warning from the Montreal mayor that the summer will not be what people are used to.
New Brunswick announced an 11th day of no new cases on Wednesday. But Dr. Jennifer Russell, chief medical officer of health, said the province is far from the end of the crisis. She encouraged more people to wear a mask when out in the community, saying in time, it will become more normalized. Read more about what’s happening in N.B.
Prince Edward Island reported no new cases again on Wednesday, after reporting one on Tuesday, the first since mid-April.The province has extended the state of emergency in the province until the end of May, but some public health restrictions will start being lifted as of May 1. Read more about what’s happening in P.E.I, including full details around its newly released reopening plan.
WATCH | Dr. Theresa Tam on WHO response to COVID-19, reopening Canada:
Part 3 of 3 of Rosemary Barton’s exclusive interview with Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam on the WHO’s response to COVID-19, reopening Canada and the personal stresses that come with her job. 11:55
Newfoundland and Labrador reported no new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, leaving the provincial total at 258. Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, chief medical officer of health, announced two new orders including one requiring assisted living facilities for seniors to take steps to protect their residents, and another restricting visitors to the province. Read more about what’s happening in N.L
From The Associated Press and Reuters, updated at 6:00 p.m. ET
U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday the federal government will not be extending its coronavirus social distancing guidelines once they expire tomorrow, and his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, predicted that by July, the country will be “really rocking again.”
The U.S.death toll has surpassed 60,000 in less than three months, higher than the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War over almost two decades.
Kushner described the administration’s response to the pandemic as “a great success story.”
Trump also mentioned at the briefing the hopeful preliminary results of a key clinical trial of the antiviral drug remdesivir that showed it helped certain patients recover more quickly from COVID-19.
The number of known U.S. coronavirus infections has now passed the one million mark. The actual count is believed to be higher, with state public health officials cautioning that shortages of trained workers and materials mean they have limited testing capacity, resulting in an incomplete picture of the spread of the virus.
Customers eat lunch next to a table closed for physical distancing at Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar in Smyrna, Ga., on the day restaurants and theatres were allowed to reopen to the public as part of the state’s phased reopening of businesses and restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters)
The U.S. economy shrank at a 4.8 per cent annual rate last quarter as the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the country and began triggering a recession that will end the longest expansion on record.
It was the sharpest fall since the economy shrank at an 8.4 per cent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession.
Widespread business shutdowns have caused roughly 30 million workers to lose jobs over the past month and a half. As layoffs mount, retail sales are sinking, along with manufacturing, construction, home sales and consumer confidence.
The Federal Reserve signaled Wednesday that it will keep its key short-term interest rate near zero for the foreseeable future as part of its extraordinary efforts to bolster the economy.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says Florida’s restaurants and retail stores will be allowed to reopen Monday at 25 per cent capacity, if the local government allows it. The governor specifically excluded hard-hit, heavily populated Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, saying their businesses will begin Phase 1 when it is safer.
The governor also will allow hospitals and surgical centres to restart nonessential, elective procedures — but only if they have sufficient medical supplies and agree to help nursing homes and assisted-living facilities prevent and respond to coronavirus outbreaks. Parks, golf courses and other outdoor recreation areas already began reopening in some counties Wednesday.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio oversaw the dispersal of a large, tightly packed Hasidic Jewish funeral and lashed out at the mourners who had gathered in defiance of physical distancing rules. Critics accused de Blasio of singling out Orthodox Jews for censure when other New Yorkers have also violated guidelines intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The mayor defended his actions and said the number of daily deaths is still “disgustingly high.” New York reported 330 new COVID-19 deaths Wednesday, continuing a trend of daily fatalities decreasing slowly over the past three weeks.
What’s happening around the world
From The Associated Press and Reuters, updated at 6:30 p.m. ET
With 325 new confirmed deaths from coronavirus, Spain on Wednesday saw a slight rebound in fatalities for a total of 24,275 since the beginning of the pandemic. Infections stand at over 212,000, although the Health Ministry’s figure only includes the cases confirmed by the most reliable laboratory tests that are not being conducted massively. Authorities want to come out from a near total freeze of social and economic life in stages and at different speeds depending on how its provinces and islands respond to the health crisis.
A child wearing a protective mask runs on a pathway, after restrictions were partially lifted for children, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in El Masnou, Spain, on Wednesday. (Albert Gea/Reuters)
The coronavirus pandemic will plunge Germany’s economy into its deepest recession since the Second World War, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said on Wednesday as the government cut its economic growth forecast for this year. “We’re facing major challenges, both economically and politically,” Altmaier told reporters in Berlin, presenting the government’s updated growth forecast for Europe’s largest economy.
Teachers prepare placards with hygiene rules for schoolchildren at Schloss-Schule elementary school during the coronavirus crisis on Wednesday in Heppenheim, Germany. (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
Russia’s nationwide tally of confirmed coronavirus cases neared the 100,000 mark on Wednesday after 5,841 new cases of the virus were registered overnight along with a record daily rise in the death toll. More than 1,000 cases have been found among workers building a liquefied natural gas facility in the far northern Murmansk region.
WATCH | Russians impoverished by COVID-19 pandemic with little help from Kremlin:
Millions of Russians have become impoverished during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Kremlin is offering little financial support even though it has billions in the coffers. 2:04
Sweden‘s southern city of Lund says it is spreading stinking chicken manure on the grounds of a central park to discourage a public celebration there on Thursday. It’s traditionally a big festive day among Swedish students and youth.
People drink and eat at an outdoor restaurant in Stockholm on Sunday. Sweden has kept large parts of society open for normal life to continue while observing some public health advice, although this has also attracted criticism. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency/The Associated Press)
Sweden has maintained a relatively relaxed approach to public restrictions amid the coronavirus outbreak. But the government is strongly urging citizens to practise proper social distancing. Sweden, with a population of about 10 million, has reported 19,621 coronavirus cases and 2,355 deaths.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Wednesday announced an easing of population movement restrictions outside Budapest, which has reported the most cases of coronavirus infections, saying shops will be allowed to reopen without time limits. However, the wearing of masks will be mandatory in shops and on public transport.
Public health officials in India have shelved their plan to administer hydroxychloroquine or HCQ, an untested anti-malarial, to thousands in Mumbai’s crowded slums as a way of preventing infections in healthy people. Health officials in Mumbai said that the plan to “conduct a test” was still on the cards but had not yet been approved by the Indian government.
The United Nations humanitarian chief says there have been 44 cases of COVID-19 and four deaths in Syria. Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council that a health-care system decimated by nine years of war can’t be expected “to cope with a crisis that is challenging even the wealthiest nations.” He says “testing capacity remains very limited,” and measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 are already hurting the most vulnerable.
South Korean infectious disease experts have downplayed concerns that patients could get reinfected with the new coronavirus after fully recovering. While hundreds in South Korea have tested positive again after their release from hospitals, Oh Myoung-don, who heads the country’s central clinical committee on new infectious diseases, told a news conference on Wednesday there was a “high possibility” that such test results were flawed.
South Korean job seekers take an exam conducted outdoors amid physical distancing measures to avoid the spread of COVID-19 in Seoul over the weekend. (Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)
Sri Lanka will reimpose a 24-hour countrywide curfew as part of the country’s stringent measures designed to contain the spread of the coronavirus, effective Thursday night and continuing until May 4. The government’s decision to go for a blanket curfew across the island comes after a surge of confirmed cases in the last three days. There are now 630 COVID-19 cases in Sri Lanka, including seven deaths.
WATCH | Vaccine development aided by intense global focus, says Toronto respirologist:
‘This is an effort like no other we’ve ever seen,’ says Dr. Samir Gupta, who believes that could help shorten the vaccine development cycle. 1:30
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
