TORONTO —
A new, more contagious variant of COVID-19 that first surfaced in the U.K. has been detected in Canada, something health experts had already predicted.
Ontario’s Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, announced Saturday that there are two confirmed cases of the coronavirus variant in Durham region. The patients who tested positive are a couple, now in self-isolation.
“I’m not surprised,” Dr. Brian Conway, medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre, told CTV News Channel Saturday, in the wake of the news. “Obviously, this variant has been circulating for some time before it was actually recognized.”
In a news release announcing the cases, Dr. Yaffe said this “further reinforces the need for Ontarians to stay home as much as possible and continue to follow all public health advice, including the provincewide shutdown measures beginning today.
Durham Region Health Department has conducted case and contact investigation and Ontario is working in collaboration with our federal counterparts at the Public Health Agency of Canada.”
The PHAC said in a statement Saturday that they believe there are more cases out there.
“As the monitoring continues, it is expected that other cases of this variant and other variants of concern may be found in Canada,” the statement reads.
But even before today’s confirmation that this coronavirus variant is in Canada, health experts suspected it was already here.
“It’s spread to other countries,” Ronald St. John, the former director-general of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), told CTV News Channel earlier on Saturday.
“Since it’s been found since September, there’s no reason why people coming since September haven’t been able to bring that new strain to Canada.”
The new variant that emerged from the U.K. has since been found in other countries around the world, including France, Japan, Israel and Sweden.
Only two days ago, PHAC said in a statement that there had been “no evidence of these variants in Canada to-date” and that it was enhancing screening and scrutiny of quarantine plans for inbound passengers.
The Ontario news release on Saturday thanked the “proactive work” of the PHAC in locating the two cases of the new variant.
Conway said that more measures need to be taken to understand how the variant made its way into Canada.
“We need to do much more testing, we need to understand where this couple became infected,” he said, adding that we can only interrupt the “transmission chains” if we understand them.
On Dec. 20, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a restriction on flights from the U.K. to Canada in an effort to prevent the new variant from coming to Canada. That restriction has since been extended to Jan. 6.
According to the PHAC’s Saturday statement, travellers who arrive to Canada are also being asked “additional health screening questions to help identify if their travel itinerary included a country concern reporting this variant in the last 14 days.”
St. John said these measures may have come too little, too late.
The two cases announced today have no travel history, high-risk contacts or known exposure.
“It’s a question of if the horse is out of the barn already, and are we closing the doors too late?” St. John said.
Kirsten Fiest, an epidemiologist at the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, also said stopping flights from the U.K. may not be enough to prevent the new variant from spreading in Canada.
“Almost certainly, it’s spread even further than we know right now,” Fiest told CTV Calgary. “If something can spread really quickly and rapidly and it increases the likelihood of infection, then our biggest concern should be long-term care facilities.”
PHAC said in their statement that the lack of a clear link to travel in the new cases in Durham Region underlines the importance of minimizing community transmission.
“As these two cases did not travel outside of Canada, it is important to follow public health measures and limit contacts with others, to reduce the transmission of the virus and any of its variants in communities,” the statement says.
The new variant of the virus “may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible than the original version of the disease,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a press conference on Dec. 19, though a new study from the London School of Hygiene And Tropical Medicine suggests the virus is about 56 per cent more contagious.
“While early data suggests that these new variants may be more transmissible, to date there is no evidence that they cause more severe disease,” PHAC stated Saturday, adding that more research needs to be done.
Two other variants of COVID-19 have also been found in Nigeria and South Africa, leading Canada to expand screening and monitoring measures on flights inbound from South Africa.
“We need to be on the lookout for other variants,” Conway said.
St. John said both variants need further study to understand how variations in the genes could impact the behaviour of the virus and its effects on how the disease presents itself in the people who have contracted it, adding that the variant found in South Africa also appear, “at this point,” to be more contagious than the base strain of coronavirus already in Canada.
As to whether or not the vaccines already being delivered in Canada will be effective in defending against these new variants, St. John said he doesn’t believe the virus will mutate in the same way seasonal influenza does, and that the vaccines will likely be effective.
“So far, as near as I know, the vaccine targets many different parts of the virus,” St. John said. “So it’s a good thing that it does, and that the virus probably will not escape the vaccine.”
Conway added that there is “no evidence that the vaccine works less well,” on the variant that first emerged in the U.K.
BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin has also said he is “confident” his company’s vaccine, created with Pfizer, will be effective against the new U.K. variant of the virus.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
