A B.C. health authority facing an uptick in COVID-19 cases — including a recent dance studio outbreak now linked to 36 cases — will soon have more testing capacity.
Fraser Health announced on Tuesday that another COVID-19 test collection centre is slated to open in North Surrey next week. The health authority, which covers a broad swath east of Vancouver including communities like Burnaby and Surrey, accounts for 9,234 of the 15,800 COVID-19 cases reported in B.C. since the beginning of the pandemic.
Faced with rising case numbers, B.C.’s health minister and a top public health official on Tuesday reminded people in the province to keep gatherings small, saying “much of the recent transmission” in the province has been connected to get-togethers.
“This is particularly important in the Fraser Health region where public health teams are asking everyone to avoid all social gatherings in your home right now — even those that are within the restrictions of the provincial health officer order,” a statement from Health Minister Adrian Dix and Deputy Provincial Health Officer Dr. Reka Gustafson said.
Alberta is also seeing an uptick of cases, with the top doctor cautioning that the province is “at a critical juncture in this pandemic.”
Dr. Deena Hinshaw urged people not to give up on the fight against COVID-19, saying Tuesday that “we need to reduce the rate of transmission if we want to avoid more difficult choices in the future.”
The province on Tuesday reported more than 6,100 active COVID-19 cases, with more than 2,500 cases each in Edmonton and Calgary.
What’s happening across Canada
As of noon ET on Wednesday, provinces and territories in Canada had reported a cumulative total of 246,959 confirmed or presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 205,245 as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 10,328.
Health officials in Saskatchewan are introducing a new measure requiring masks in public indoor spaces in Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert. The measure, which will be in place for 28 days before being reviewed, takes effect Friday.
The province, which on Tuesday reported 81 new cases (and has averaged 76 new cases a day over the last week) is also decreasing the number of people allowed at indoor gatherings.
In Manitoba, the Red Cross has been asked to provide staff to help care for residents at some long-term care homes dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks.
Ontario reported 987 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday. The province, which also reported 16 additional deaths, has now seen 79,692 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, with 68,189 of those listed as recovered. The provincial death toll stood at 3,182.
In an update posted Wednesday, the province said there were 367 people in hospital with 75 in intensive care.
Ontario is reporting 987 cases of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a>. Locally, there are 319 new cases in Toronto, 299 in Peel, 85 in York Region and 62 in Durham. There are 945 more resolved cases and nearly 28,600 tests completed.
On Tuesday, Ontario unveiled a colour-coded system to communicate what regions are under what restrictions, saying the new system will be an “early warning system” and allow the province to scale public health measures based on what’s happening in a given region.
“As a province, and as a country, we’re grappling with a new reality. And it’s becoming more and more clear COVID-19 will be with us for a while,” Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday, adding that the province is planning for “the long game.”
But some public health and infectious disease experts had reservations about the plan, which will move a region from “orange” to “red” only if the local test positivity rate surpasses 9.9 per cent. You can get the full details of the newly released framework here, including details around test positivity rate, outbreaks and health-system capacity.
The infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists <a href=”https://twitter.com/CBCNews?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@CBCNews</a> spoke to warn Ontario’s new <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> restrictions framework sets the threshold for closures, lockdown too high. <br><br>Story from <a href=”https://twitter.com/McGillivrayKate?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@McGillivrayKate</a>:<a href=”https://t.co/2G2qroleyu”>https://t.co/2G2qroleyu</a>
Data from Quebec released on Wednesday reported 1,029 new COVID-19 cases and 33 deaths, eight of which occurred in the last 24 hours. The latest report put the number of people in hospital at 539, with 81 in intensive care.
Montreal General Hospital suspends 15th floor admissions after second COVID-19 outbreak in less than a week <a href=”https://t.co/baJbfGLCBD”>https://t.co/baJbfGLCBD</a>
In Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia on Wednesday reported four new COVID-19 cases, bringing the cumulative number of cases in the province to 1,118 with 65 deaths since the pandemic began. Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang said Tuesday that several cases are being investigated by public health but noted there’s “nothing at this time that points to general community spread here in Nova Scotia.”
New Brunswick reported three new cases on Wednesday and there was one new case reported in Newfoundland and Labrador, which comes after eight days straight with no new cases in the province.
There were no new cases reported on Tuesday in Prince Edward Island, which has no active cases.
Across the North, there were no new cases reported in Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut.
What’s happening around the world
Curbside voting was held in St. Charles County for voters who have COVID-19 in Missouri on Tuesday. The voting is over, but the results of the U.S. presidential election are not yet clear as counting continues in several states. (Lawrence Bryant/Reuters)
As of early Wednesday morning, more than 47.4 million COVID-19 cases had been reported worldwide, with more than 31.6 million of those considered recovered, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S.-based institution put the cumulative worldwide death toll at more than 1.2 million.
In the Americas, eyes were on the United States, where a contentious election fight between President Donald Trump and former vice-president Joe Biden had not yet resulted in a clear victor. The country, which has seen more reported COVID-19 cases than any nation in the world, is seeing a surge in cases in several states.
The president’s response to the global pandemic was a major issue in the campaign, with measures like lockdowns, mandated business closures and mask requirements proving to be deeply divisive in many parts of the U.S.
The World Health Organization says there has been a “further acceleration” in the speed of COVID-19’s spread in Europe, which was responsible for about half of the globe’s new cases reported last week.
The Swiss government on Wednesday authorized deploying up to 2,500 military personnel to help the country’s hard-pressed health-care system handle a second wave of coronavirus infections.
This marked the second time this year the army has rolled out to support hospitals as they treat and transport patients. New infections surpassed 10,000 in a day on Wednesday, threatening to overwhelm the health-care system.
The marquee of Kino International Cinema in Berlin reads ‘Take care of each other’ on the first day of a four-week semi-lockdown during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this week. (Getty Images)
Poland on Wednesday registered record numbers of new COVID-19 infections and related deaths, despite being covered by “red zone” restrictions limiting people’s movements and activities during the pandemic.
The country’s health ministry said almost 24,700 new cases were registered, up from the previous record of almost 22,000 last week, figures that the ministry had earlier said would mean “worse than the worst scenario.” Over 370 people died in the past 24 hours.
The ministry noted a spike in cases in big cities, including in Warsaw, the capital, where massive anti-government protests have been held daily for almost two weeks against the tightening of the abortion law, already one of Europe’s strictest. The government is expected to announce new restrictions later Wednesday.
Russian officials on Wednesday reported 19,768 new coronavirus infections and 389 new deaths, both the highest since the beginning of the pandemic.
The Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia say they have both registered a record daily number of COVID-19 infections since the start of the outbreak.
South Africa remained the hardest-hit nation in Africa on Wednesday, with more than 728,000 reported cases of COVID-19 and more than 19,500 deaths.
Algeria’s secretive presidency has confirmed that the mysterious illness that caused President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to be hospitalized in Germany last month was the coronavirus.
Algerian secondary level students wearing masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic attend the first day of school in the Algerian capital Algiers on Wednesday. (AFP/Getty Images)
On Wednesday, the presidency said the state of 74-year-old Tebboune’s health is “gradually improving” and he “continues to receive treatment in a specialized German hospital after contracting COVID-19.” It the first time that officials have explicitly mentioned COVID-19 in connection to the Oct. 28 hospitalization.
However, previous to his hospitalization, several senior officials in the president’s entourage had developed COVID-19 symptoms and Tebboune had been placed in what the government called “voluntary preventive confinement.”
In the Asia-Pacific region, Australia’s coronavirus hot spot of Victoria state reported zero COVID-19 cases for the fifth straight day as states began easing regional border restrictions, raising prospects of a faster return to normal.
As the pandemic has pushed many companies to allow telecommuting, it has also caused a population outflow from Tokyo — the first time that has happened in years, the latest government data showed.
India’s capital reported a record 6,725 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, hit by its worst wave of infections since March.
New Delhi had previously reported a high of 5,891 cases on Oct. 30, averaging more than 5,200 cases a day this past week. It now has 403,096 confirmed cases and 6,604 deaths reported. India’s overall positive caseload rose by 46,253 in the past 24 hours after dipping to 38,310 on Tuesday.
A Kashmiri health worker takes a nasal swab sample to test for COVID-19 in Srinagar, in India-controlled Kashmir on Wednesday. (Mukhtar Khan/The Associated Press)
In the Middle East, Bahrain has granted emergency approval for the use of a Chinese vaccine candidate currently in phase three trials on frontline workers, state news agency BNA said.
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.
