OTTAWA —
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be providing a national update on the COVID-19 response, as one of Ontario’s top public health officials is warning the pandemic curve is going “the wrong way.”
“Today’s numbers are to be frank, they are scary… It’s going the wrong way,” Ontario’s Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe said Friday morning. “We have more and more people hospitalized, more and more people in ICU, more and more people on ventilators.”
Across the country, with many focused on the vaccine administration figures, the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths are climbing following the holiday season, despite varying degrees of lockdowns across Canada.
There are more than 79,000 active cases across the country, and there have been a total of 635,134 confirmed COVID-19 infections since the start of the pandemic. More than 16,500 people have died.
Trudeau will be speaking from Rideau Cottage, followed by a federal health update from officials and cabinet ministers.
His latest national address comes on the heels of a call with his provincial and territorial counterparts about the pace of the vaccine rollout. After calling for premiers to get on with it, provinces and their health care facilities have accelerated their administration of immunizations and are now calling for larger deliveries of doses from the federal government, more quickly.
According to a readout from the cross-Canada call from the Prime Minister’s Office, the federal and provincial governments discussed the continued rise in COVID-19 cases, increasing outbreaks in long-term care homes, and vowed to keep working together on the vaccine rollout.
“We’re in a desperate situation,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Friday of the situation in his province. “This is the most serious situation we’ve ever been in… since the beginning of this pandemic.”
