British Columbia’s top doctor said the first stage of the province’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts will focus on priority populations — including long-term care residents and staff, health-care workers, and people living in remote First Nations communities — with an aim of getting roughly 150,000 people immunized by February.
Vaccination efforts in Canada have been underway in several provinces for weeks and recently began in the territories, which will be using the Moderna vaccine.
At a briefing on Monday, Dr. Bonnie Henry reiterated that for January, the province will be focused on residents and staff in long-term care homes.
“We have said that from the very beginning, those are the people that we know need our protection most.”
Henry said the province’s priority groups from December to February include:
Roughly 70,000 residents and staff at long-term care facilities.
Roughly 30,000 health-care workers, including hospital workers, paramedics and public health workers.
Roughly 25,000 people living in remote or isolated First Nation communities.
Roughly 13,000 residents and staff at assisted living residences.
Roughly 8,000 essential visitors to long-term care or assisted living facilities.
Roughly 2,000 people in hospital or in the community waiting for a long-term care placement.
Henry said the province is “hoping and planning” to get through the first groups by the end of January.
“The scheduling of these priority groups will vary a little bit as we deal with additional outbreaks in our communities, in long-term care in particular,” she said.
More details on general rollout are expected toward the end of January, Henry said.
After finishing the first “high-risk and high-priority groups,” the province will move onto the next group, which includes seniors over the age of 80 in the community and Indigenous seniors and elders over 65.
Homeless people using shelters, people in congregate living settings like provincial correctional centres and group homes, and health-care workers including family doctors and paramedics transporting long-term care residents will then be given priority for shots, Henry said, calling the immunization program a “monumental task” that will last for months.
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There are currently two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in Canada, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
While the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needs ultra-low temperatures, limiting distribution, Henry said she’s hopeful Health Canada will approve additional vaccines, including the AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines, increasing the amount of vaccine available.
In Quebec, health officials have decided to delay the second shot for many of the people who got a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine so they can get the protection offered by a single dose to more front-line health-care workers.
Radio-Canada reported Tuesday that Premier François Legault has been asked to consider a curfew as the province deals with rising numbers and an increasingly strained health-care system. The premier hasn’t made a final decision, the report said.
Ontario, which has faced criticism over what many see as a slow rollout and a holiday pause in vaccination efforts, on Monday gave a second dose to the woman who got the very first shot in the province. Anita Quidangen, a personal support worker in Toronto, said she hopes others will follow her footsteps as the province continues its rollout of two COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist and a member of Ontario’s vaccine task force, said Tuesday that logistical and organizational challenges were at play at the outset of vaccination efforts in the province and across the country.
“I think it’s fair to give these programs — not just in Ontario, but across the country — a little bit of wiggle room and a little bit of runway to take off,” Bogoch told CBC’s Heather Hiscox. “However, it’s now been three weeks since the first delivery of the vaccine. We should be taking off, we should be in the air, and we should have mass vaccine programs functioning at full capacity by now.”
Ontario, which as of Sunday night had administered 42,419 doses, is set to provide a briefing later Tuesday morning about the vaccination plan.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford looks on as the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is administered to personal support worker Anita Quidangen by registered nurse Hiwot Arfaso at The Michener Institute in Toronto on Monday. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)
“I think the next test is to see what’s done between now and a week from now,” Bogoch said. “We should not have any vaccines in freezers.”
“Today you’re going to hear, hopefully across the country, some very practical methods on how that’s going to be done.”
“I feel very privileged, and I did it because I want all people to know that there is an answer to what’s happening within our life right now,” said 84-year-old Agnes Mills, the first person in Yukon to get the shot.
Nunavut is also expected to start its vaccination program this week and the Northwest Territories is scheduled to begin immunizations next week.
As of early Tuesday morning, Canada’s COVID-19 case count stood at 611,424, with 77,466 of those cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 16,074.
In the Prairie provinces, Manitoba reported 118 new cases of COVID-19, while neighbouring Saskatchewan reported 286 new cases. Alberta, which has seen several MLAs demoted or removed from their cabinet posts after facing questions over holiday travel, reported 1,128 new cases of COVID-19.
In the North, a Nunavut woman who contracted COVID-19 in November after delivering a child in Manitoba, died on Sunday. Silatik Qavvik, 35, leaves behind five children, including the baby she delivered in Winnipeg.
-From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 9:10 a.m. ET
What’s happening in the U.S.
Dr. Thomas Yadegar, medical director of the intensive care unit at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, Calif., asks for help while he attends to a COVID-19 patient inside a bedroom adapted with isolation doors over the weekend. (Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images)
More than two-thirds of the coronavirus vaccines shipped within the United States have gone unused, U.S. health officials said on Monday, as the governors of New York and Florida vowed to penalize hospitals that do not dispense shots quickly.
Medical authorities have confronted widespread distrust of immunization safety, even among some health-care workers, owing in part to the record speed with which COVID-19 vaccines were developed and approved. But some U.S. officials also have cited organizational glitches in launching the most ambitious mass inoculation campaign in the nation’s history in the year-end holiday season.
“The logistics of getting it going into the people who want it is really the issue,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious disease specialist, told MSNBC. “We’re not where we want to be. No doubt about that.”
The federal government has distributed more than 15 million vaccine doses to states and territories across the country, but only about 4.5 million have been administered, the CDC reported.
Those figures put the government far short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020, although officials said they expected the rollout would pick up significantly this month.
The U.S. has seen more than 20.8 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 353,000 deaths, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
–From Reuters and CBC News, last updated at 7 a.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout has gotten off to a sluggish start, but there could be lessons to learn from countries such as Israel, which has vaccination clinics operating around the clock. 3:11
As of early Tuesday morning, more than 85.7 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, with more than 48.2 million cases considered recovered or resolved, according to a COVID-19 tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 1.8 million.
In Europe, England is facing a third national lockdown that will last at least six weeks, as authorities struggle to stem a surge in COVID-19 infections that threatens to overwhelm hospitals around the U.K.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday announced a tough new stay-at-home order for England that won’t be reviewed until at least mid-February to combat a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus. It takes effect at midnight Tuesday. Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon imposed a lockdown that began Tuesday.
Johnson and Sturgeon said the lockdowns were needed to protect the National Health Service as a new, more contagious variant of COVID-19 sweeps across Britain. On Monday, hospitals in England were treating 26,626 coronavirus patients, 40 per cent more than during the first pandemic peak in April.
Many U.K. hospitals have already been forced to cancel elective surgery, and the strain of the pandemic may soon delay cancer surgery and limit intensive care services for patients without COVID-19, Professor Neil Mortenson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, told Times Radio.
“Over the weekend we talked about a slow-motion car crash, but I think it’s getting much worse than that now,” he said.
Beginning Tuesday, primary and secondary schools and colleges in England will be closed for in-person learning except for the children of key workers and vulnerable pupils. University students will not be returning until at least mid-February. People were told to work from home unless it’s impossible to do so, and to leave home only for essential trips.
All non-essential shops and personal care services like hairdressers will be closed, and restaurants can only offer takeout. Britain has reported over 75,500 virus-related deaths, one of the highest tallies in Europe.
Ambulances line up as a government sponsored electronic sign gives out coronavirus pandemic information to visitors and staff outside the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Amid public outcry, France’s health minister has promised an “exponential” acceleration of his country’s slow coronavirus vaccination process.
After barely 500 people in France were vaccinated in the first six days, Health Minister Olivier Veran defended the government’s strategy of giving the vaccines first to residents of nursing homes. But he vowed Tuesday to simplify a bureaucratic consent process blamed in part for France’s lagging vaccinations.
In the Americas, Mexico approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for emergency use Monday, hoping to spur a vaccination effort that has only given about 44,000 shots since the third week of December, about 82 per cent of the doses the country has received. Prior to this, the Pfizer vaccine was the only one approved for use in Mexico.
Assistant Health Secretariat Hugo Lopez-Gatell said he erroneously reported approval for Chinese vaccine-maker CanSino, noting it had not yet submitted full study results for safety and efficacy.
In the Middle East, Iran has registered its first case of a highly contagious coronavirus variant that emerged in Britain, in an Iranian who arrived from the U.K.
American biotech company Moderna said Israel has approved its COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna said in a statement Tuesday that the Israeli Health Ministry authorized use of the company’s vaccine and that it would begin delivering this month the six million doses secured by Israel.
Israel’s Health Ministry reported 8,308 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Tuesday — one of the highest daily tallies since the beginning of the pandemic — as the country struggles to contain the pandemic during a third national lockdown
In the Asia-Pacific region, Japan will decide later this week whether to impose a state of emergency in the Tokyo area, a move citizens derided as too little, too late in a nation set to host the Olympics.
Medical workers in a booth work during COVID-19 testing at a makeshift clinic in Seoul. South Korea is extending stringent distancing rules as authorities seek to suppress a viral resurgence. (Ahn Young-joon/The Associated Press)
As a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to visit China to investigate the origins of COVID-19, Beijing has stepped up efforts not only to prevent new outbreaks, but also shape the narrative about when and where the pandemic began.
The number of deaths linked to the coronavirus in South Korea passed 1,000 on Tuesday, while an increasing number of gym owners said they would reopen in protest against strict physical distancing rules.
In Africa, Eswatini aims to vaccinate all its 1.3 million people against COVID-19, senior officials in the southern African kingdom said.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 7 a.m. ET
TORONTO – He’s firmly among Canada’s top three-year-olds but My Boy Prince faces a stiff test Saturday at Woodbine Racetrack.
The ’24 King’s Plate runner-up will be part of a global field in the $1-million Woodbine Mile turf event. Not only will it be My Boy Prince’s first race against older competition but among the seven other starters will be such horses as Naval Power (Great Britain), Big Rock (France) and Filo Di Arianna (Brazil).
My Boy Prince will race for the first time since finishing second to filly Caitlinhergrtness in the Plate on Aug. 23.
“It’s his first try against older horses and it’s hard to say where he fits in,” said trainer Mark Casse. “This time of year running a three-year-old against older horses, it’s like running a teenager against college athletes.
“We’re doing it because we believe a mile on the turf is his preferred surface … we wanted to give him a shot at this. (American owner Gary Barber) is someone who likes to think outside the box and take calculated risks so we’re going to see where he fits in.”
Casse, 16 times Canada’s top trainer, is a Hall of Famer both here and in the U.S. He’s also a two-time Woodbine Mile winner with filly Tepin (2016) and World Approval (2017).
Sahin Civaci will again ride My Boy Prince, Canada’s top two-year-old male who has six wins and 10 money finishes (6-3-1) in 11 career starts. The horse will be one of three Casse trainees in the race with Filo Di Arianna (ridden by Sovereign Award winner Kazushi Kimura) and Win for the Money (veteran Woodbine jockey Patrick Husbands aboard).
Naval Power, a four-year-old, has finished in the money in eight of nine starts (six wins, twice second) and will race in Canada for the first time. He comes to Woodbine with second-place finishes in two Grade 1 turf races.
Big Rock, another four-year-old, makes his North American debut Saturday. The horse has five wins and five second-place finishes in 14 starts but has struggled in ’24, finishing sixth, 10th and fifth in three races.
Filo Di Arianna is a four-time graded stakes winner with nine victories, three seconds and a third from 17 starts. It was Canada’s ’22 top male sprinter and champion male turf horse.
Other starters include Playmea Tune, Niagara Skyline and Secret Reserve.
Playmea Tune, a four-year-old, is trained by Josie Carrol. The gelding has made three starts, winning twice and finishing second in the Grade 3 Bold Venture on Aug. 23.
Woodbine-based Niagara Skyline is a six-year-old with 13 money finishes (six wins, five seconds, twice third) in 24-lifetime starts. The John Charlambous trainee has reached the podium (1-1-1) in all three races this year.
Secret Reserve, also a six-year-old, has finished in the money in 15-of-26 starts (six wins, one second, eight thirds). The horse, at 44-1, was third in the Grade 2 King Edward Stakes over a mile on the E.P. Taylor turf course.
The Mile highlights a stellar card featuring six graded stakes races. Also on tap are the $750,000 E.P. Taylor Stakes (fillies and mares), $500,000 bet365 Summer Stakes (two-year-olds) and $500,000 Johnnie Walker Natalma Stakes (two-year-old fillies), all Grade 1 turf events.
The Mile, Natalma and Summer winners earn automatic entries into the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar in November.
Casse has won all four races, earning his first E.P. Taylor title last year with filly Fev Rover, Canada’s horse of the year and champion female turf horse. Fev Rover will defend her title Saturday against a field that includes Moira, the ’22 King’s Plate winner and Canada’s horse of the year trained by Woodbine’s Kevin Attard.
“It (E.P. Taylor) was definitely on my bucket list because it had eluded us,” Casse said. “But I honestly hadn’t realized I’d won all four of them, hadn’t really thought about it.”
Casse will have horses in all four turf races Saturday. Arguably the most intriguing matchup will be between Moira and Fev Rover, who ran 1-2, respectively, in a photo finish Aug. 11 in the Grade 2 Beverly D. Stakes, a 1 3/16-mile turf race, at Virginia’s Colonial Downs.
“What’s funny is the two of them went all the way to Virginia and she beat us by a nose,” Casse said. “We could’ve done that at Woodbine.
“There’s two of the best fillies in the world both from Toronto and they’re going to be competing Saturday.”
Some question having so many solid races on a single card but Casse likes the strategy.
“I think it’s a good thing,” he said. “On Saturday, the main focus on horse racing in the world will be on Woodbine and that’s because it’s such a great card.
“It’s an international day, there’s horses coming from everywhere and we’re going to do our best to represent Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Maria Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam singles champion, led the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan vote her first year on the ballot — an important part to possible selection to the hall’s next class.
The organization released the voting results Friday. American doubles team Bob and Mike Bryan finished second with Canada’s Daniel Nestor third.
The Hall of Fame said tens of thousands of fans from 120 countries cast ballots. Fan voting is one of two steps in the hall’s selection process. The second is an official group of journalists, historians, and Hall of Famers from the sport who vote on the ballot for the hall’s class of 2025.
“I am incredibly grateful to the fans all around the world who supported me during the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan votes,” Sharapova said in a statement. “It is a tremendous honor to be considered for the Hall of Fame, and having the fans’ support makes it all the more special.”
Sharapova became the first Russian woman to reach No. 1 in the world. She won Wimbledon in 2004, the U.S. Open in 2006 and the Australian Open in 2008. She also won the French Open twice, in 2012 and 2014.
Sharapova was also part of Russia’s championship Fed Cup team in 2008 and won a silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012.
To make the hall, candidates must receive 75% or higher on combined results of the official voting group and additional percentage from the fan vote. Sharapova will have an additional three percentage points from winning the fan vote.
The Bryans, who won 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, will have two additional percentage points and Nestor, who won eight Grand Slam doubles titles, will get one extra percentage point.
The hall’s next class will be announced late next month.
TORONTO – Roots Corp. may have built its brand on all things comfy and cosy, but its CEO says activewear is now “really becoming a core part” of the brand.
The category, which at Roots spans leggings, tracksuits, sports bras and bike shorts, has seen such sustained double-digit growth that Meghan Roach plans to make it a key part of the business’ future.
“It’s an area … you will see us continue to expand upon,” she told analysts on a Friday call.
The Toronto-based retailer’s push into activewear has taken shape over many years and included several turns as the official designer and supplier of Team Canada’s Olympic uniform.
But consumers have had plenty of choice when it comes to workout gear and other apparel suited to their sporting needs. On top of the slew of athletic brands like Nike and Adidas, shoppers have also gravitated toward Lululemon Athletica Inc., Alo and Vuori, ramping up competition in the activewear category.
Roach feels Roots’ toehold in the category stems from the fit, feel and following its merchandise has cultivated.
“Our product really resonates with (shoppers) because you can wear it through multiple different use cases and occasions,” she said.
“We’ve been seeing customers come back again and again for some of these core products in our activewear collection.”
Her remarks came the same day as Roots revealed it lost $5.2 million in its latest quarter compared with a loss of $5.3 million in the same quarter last year.
The company said the second-quarter loss amounted to 13 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Aug. 3, the same as a year earlier.
In presenting the results, Roach reminded analysts that the first half of the year is usually “seasonally small,” representing just 30 per cent of the company’s annual sales.
Sales for the second quarter totalled $47.7 million, down from $49.4 million in the same quarter last year.
The move lower came as direct-to-consumer sales amounted to $36.4 million, down from $37.1 million a year earlier, as comparable sales edged down 0.2 per cent.
The numbers reflect the fact that Roots continued to grapple with inventory challenges in the company’s Cooper fleece line that first cropped up in its previous quarter.
Roots recently began to use artificial intelligence to assist with daily inventory replenishments and said more tools helping with allocation will go live in the next quarter.
Beyond that time period, the company intends to keep exploring AI and renovate more of its stores.
It will also re-evaluate its design ranks.
Roots announced Friday that chief product officer Karuna Scheinfeld has stepped down.
Rather than fill the role, the company plans to hire senior level design talent with international experience in the outdoor and activewear sectors who will take on tasks previously done by the chief product officer.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
