Cases of COVID-19 are declining in many parts of Canada, but experts say those early positive signs are dependent on widespread restrictions.
Quebec, now under a province-wide curfew, has seen new cases decline. Ontario has showed 10 consecutive declines in its seven-day average, a metric that helps to spot long-term trends compared to daily numbers that can spike up and down.
Caroline Colijn, an infectious disease modeller at Simon Fraser University, said most of the provinces seem to be declining.
“Ontario’s kind of uncertain, Saskatchewan’s growing still or again, but the rest are kind of flat or declining,” said Colijn, who also holds a Canada Research Chair in mathematics for evolution, infection and public health.
“That’s the first decline we’ve seen in Quebec and Ontario for quite a while,” she said. “In our models, it looks like a genuine decline.”
More tools needed
In B.C., for example, Colijn said the epidemic is stabilizing with strict measures such as telling people not to socialize outside their household.
But Colijn fears Ontario’s stay-at-home order, Quebec’s curfew and restrictions in other provinces aren’t solutions that people can sustain for months.
If people don’t limit their number of contacts with others then cases will start to climb again until vaccinations reach the general population.
“Unless we want to do this for six months, we do need to be thinking about throwing other tools that we have available at this problem.”
WATCH | Researchers test new tools for COVID-19 surveillance:
Researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax are working on a 3D-printed ball that can collect a building’s sewage and test the water for coronavirus. They say the tool could be used to trace outbreaks and to test the effectiveness of vaccines. 4:05
Colijn said widespread restrictions, symptomatic testing and contact tracing remain cornerstone tools. But those tools should be supplemented with wider rapid testing technologies coming to the fore, which Colijn believes could support re-opening the economy.
Federal and provincial scientists are validating rapid tests, currently used at remote mines as well as the film and airline industries, for more widespread use.
Sask. heading in the wrong direction
Nazeem Muhajarine, an epidemiologist at the University of Saskatchewan, divides the country’s into three main groups based on per-capita case counts:
The top: Atlantic Canada, which has the fewest cases.
The middle: Manitoba, Alberta and B.C., which have showed month-long improvements in COVID-19 activity following lockdowns. If trends in Ontario and Quebec continue, then they could be added to the middle group.
The bottom: Saskatchewan, which Muhajarine said isn’t even heading in the right direction, with an average of 300 new cases daily.
Muhajarine is concerned about the steep climb in COVID-19 deaths in the Prairie province.
“On Dec. 1, we had 51 deaths and by Jan. 1 it tripled to 155,” he noted.
In the first 21 days of the month, another 84 people have died in Saskatchewan.
“We really need to reverse course,” Muhajarine said. “To do that, we need very strict measures with a stay-at-home order and enforcement of orders. When we see the case numbers reverse course, we have to get our testing, tracing and isolation regime back up.”
Restrictions on retail stores, restaurants and bars could help bring cases, hospitalizations and deaths down given how Saskatchewan is “stretched to the limit,” he said.
Even places with early signs of decline, like Ontario, will see hospitalizations and deaths continue to climb for a period because of the lag time from new infections in December, health experts say.
Essential workplaces key for Ontario
Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious disease physician with Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ont., said the province’s seven-day averages are encouraging.
A worker at the Gateway Postal facility, in Mississauga, Ont., on Wednesday. Canada Post confirms a major outbreak of COVID-19 at the plant — the largest mail facility in the country that reflects how cases continue to occur among essential workers. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
“We’re now more than two weeks past what would be the New Year’s surge,” Chakrabarti said, referencing people socializing over the holidays despite advice from public health officials and politicians to stay at home.
Now that the holiday peak in new cases is over, regular winter transmission of the virus is happening in the population, he said.
Chakrabarti recalls how during the province’s first wave in the spring, cases came down and then were stuck at a plateau for months, which he said could happen again.
Driving case counts down further would ease pressure on health-care systems and protect vulnerable residents of long-term care homes.
The key, he says, is to tackle where transmission is still happening: essential workplaces.
“We were seeing people getting infected at work and then bringing it home to their family, where it was being amplified,” he said of the first wave. “That’s still happening and something a lockdown doesn’t address.”
It’s why Chakrabarti and others advocate for:
“Yes, there are some people who are breaking the rules,” Chakrabarti said. “But we also need to look at the very different industrial setups because these factors are huge, right? This is one of the reasons why things haven’t ever really turned quickly in Ontario.”
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
