Pedestrians engage in a snowball fight in the middle of Times Square in Manhattan on Thursday. New York City was among the places in the northeastern U.S. to get hit with a second blast of wintry weather in less than a week. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
COVID-19 vaccine deliveries back on track following significant delays, federal officials say
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander leading Canada’s vaccine logistics, said Thursday that deliveries of COVID-19 vaccine from the two approved suppliers — Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — are back on track following weeks of reduced shipments.
Fortin said 403,650 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in Canada this week, the largest single delivery since shipments began in December. In addition, he said both companies are on track to meet their targets by delivering a total of six million doses by the end of March — four million from Pfizer and two million from Moderna.
“We’re now coming out of this period of limited supplies. It’s an abundance of supplies for spring and summer, where we can have a significant scaling-up of immunization plans in provinces,” Fortin said.
The updated timeline provided by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) shows millions more doses arriving between now and September than previously anticipated. It projects that Canada should have enough doses from Pfizer and Moderna to fully vaccinate 14.5 million people by the end of June, and 42 million by the end of September.
The federal government has come under intense pressure from opposition politicians and other critics in recent weeks as the country’s vaccine rollout slowed. Pfizer began reducing shipments in January as it retooled its plant in Puurs, Belgium, to expand manufacturing capacity. Moderna also has cut its shipments in recent weeks.
The delays have caused Canada to fall behind dozens of other countries in measurements of doses administered by population, according to a global vaccine tracking database maintained by University of Oxford researchers.
That said, countries like Australia and Japan are among dozens of countries that have yet to inoculate any of their citizens, with the World Health Organization saying earlier this month that about 10 countries were accounting for about 75 per cent of all doses given, a situation UN secretary general Antonio Guterres on Wednesday characterized as “wildly uneven and unfair.”
Public health experts have warned that a significant disparity in vaccination schedules around the world could allow for new, potentially harmful variants to form in countries where inoculation efforts have not reached a sizeable percentage of the population.
From The National
Israel is leading the world with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout and it’s already seeing results, but the campaign has been met with some hesitant demographics and criticism for not vaccinating Palestinians. 6:05
IN BRIEF
COVID-19 testing to begin in remote Inuit coastal community in N.L. after presumptive case
COVID-19 testing began Thursday and will continue Friday in the small Labrador coastal community of Makkovik, the Nunatsiavut government says, as part of the public health response to a presumptive positive case of the virus in the Inuit town.
Anyone can get a test, even if they have not travelled and do not have any symptoms of COVID-19, officials said.
“Today and tomorrow will be very busy, hard days,” Gerald Asivak, the minister of health and social development, told CBC Radio’s Labrador Morning on Thursday. “We’re going to ensure that we meet our standards, with the province, Dr. Fitzgerald, around what needs to be done,” he said, referring to Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, Newfoundland and Labrador’s chief medical officer of health.
In winter, Makkovik — with a population of 400 or so — is accessible only by air or snowmobile. As the COVID-19 response has ramped up, the community has been effectively cut off from the outside world, with all regular flights in and out suspended, save for medical emergencies. As a result, even just a few cases would be of great concern.
“If you have to go to St. John’s for medical reasons, it’s a pretty serious situation for a person’s health. So I’m just urging people to show compassion for the individual in question here,” said Barry Andersen, the mayor of the small community.
On a positive note, the transmission potential could be lessened in light of the fact that 74 per cent of eligible adults in Makkovik have been vaccinated for COVID-19, receiving both doses of the Moderna vaccine.
Kenney defends Alta. vaccine rollout plan as critics call for more details
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is defending his government’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the face of criticism that virtually no details have been shared regarding its distribution plan.
Kenney said Wednesday that he doesn’t see the need for a big rush. He said the province will lay out its priority lists for the next phases of the vaccine distribution program “pretty soon” after studying what other provinces are doing.
“The problem now is supply, we effectively ran out of supply for all intents and purposes in mid-January. So, that is our primary focus. I will say, when it comes to the subsequent phases, a lot of this is quite fluid,” he said.
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi weighed in on Tuesday, saying he believes — despite all of the province’s talk about supply issues and Ottawa’s failure to solve them — that the bigger problem could be effective distribution.
“In other words, before we know it we’re going to have more supply than we have ability to put in peoples’ arms,” he said. “So, our goal needs to be to solve that problem now before it happens and make sure we are ready to do massive vaccinations as soon as supply is available.”
Rick Lundy, who’s with the group Open Arms Patient Advocacy, says the lack of information is frustrating.
“You almost question whether they do have a plan or they’re making it up on the fly,” he said.
But University of Calgary infectious disease physician Dr. Daniel Gregson says large venues like stadiums could be set up relatively quickly if Alberta received a big influx of vaccine.
“I think we could get it up and running as quickly as possible and you’d see a large group of people vaccinated over two to four weeks, kind of thing,” he said.
Alberta Health told CBC News it will confirm the next steps of the vaccine rollout in the next few days, following confirmation that vaccine deliveries for the province have been arranged through March.
Quebec feeling comfortable with decision to delay 2nd vaccine dose
The Quebec government confirmed in mid-January that it would delay the second of two doses of the COVID-19 vaccines for up to 90 days in order to get more doses into more arms early on, an approach that hasn’t been undertaken in every jurisdiction.
Based on preliminary figures just compiled by the Comité sur l’immunisation du Québec (CIQ), the approach appears to have worked. The data shows the vaccines to be 80 per cent effective after 14 days in younger vaccinated populations and after three weeks among the residents of long-term care facilities, who tend to be much older and sicker.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have issued protocols on administering a second dose at a precise interval — 21 and 28 days, respectively. That’s also the basis on which the vaccines were approved by Health Canada.
But Quebec’s early numbers, which the CIQ said align with results observed in British Columbia and Israel — as well as affirmative statements by the World Health Organization and U.S. infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci — seem to show that the interval period can be stretched out even a couple of weeks and still be effective.
The issue has come into play given the unpredictability of vaccine supply for Canada and some other countries early in the inoculation drive.
Dr. Gaston De Serres of the Insitut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ), who sits on the CIQ and co-authored the study made public Thursday, says it was never much of a gamble given the drug companies’ published clinical results and the existing scholarship on immune responses from vaccines.
“It wasn’t a very big bet, with everything we know about how vaccines work. We know that’s how it is. Why would these vaccines be so different?” asked De Serres.
Dr. Nicholas Brousseau, an INSPQ researcher and the chair of the CIQ, said that nothing in the data suggests first-dose immunity weakens with time, and that future research could show the preventive benefits of large-scale one-dose vaccination are even higher than its clinical effectiveness. “It’s very good news,” he said.
But provincial health experts are warning against complacency — a second shot is still vital for the two approved vaccines — and the rise of variant strains could prompt a re-think of the current strategy.
B.C. researchers working to develop breath test for COVID-19
Researchers in B.C. are working to develop a breath test for COVID-19 that if successful, could provide results in less than one minute.
The test could theoretically be rolled out in the community — at airports, schools, arenas and other venues, said Dr. Renelle Myers, an interventional respirologist at Vancouver General Hospital and B.C. Cancer Research Centre who is leading the team developing the test at Vancouver Coastal Health.
The researchers are working to identify the specific volatile organic compounds in breath that could indicate whether the coronavirus is present, said Myers. Once they identify them, they’ll be able to test for only those compounds by running breath samples through a machine similar to the ones used at airports to scan for bomb or drug residue and have results within 30 seconds or up to a minute, she said.
“When you exhale, your breath actually contains over 1,000 volatile organic compounds, and those represent the endpoints of different metabolic pathways in our body,” explained Myers. “And they can represent a state of health or state of disease.”
As with many scientific researchers, the pandemic caused a shift in priority, as the team had been studying breath samples for their potential use in diagnosing lung cancer.
Dr. Chris Carlsten, division head of respiratory medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, says the researchers will need to validate their results on several fronts. For example, it’s conceivable a breath test could pick up other respiratory viruses such as influenza instead of COVID-19, and the test would need to be able to detect even mild cases for it to have widespread applicability.
David Evans, a professor in the department of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, says the researchers are using sound science to detect the compounds, and if they’re successful, the technology could be valuable. But he said that there’s “a big hill to climb before it becomes a widely adopted method.”
AND FINALLY…
Why a Canadian in the U.K. signed up to be a volunteer vaccinator
Natasia Kalajdziovski is a Canadian PhD student living in the U.K. who has just finished her training to become a volunteer vaccinator. She says she wanted to help with the rollout after experiencing a ‘horrific’ case of COVID-19 last year. (Chantal Da Silva/CBC News)
Natasia Kalajdziovski hasn’t been home to Canada in over two years, but her pandemic experience has inspired her to help out where she is right now.
The PhD student in Britain was persuaded it was the right thing to do after contracting the virus early in the pandemic.
“I had COVID right at the beginning of the pandemic in March of last year [and] did not have a good time of it,” she told CBC’s As It Happens.
“Honestly, I would do anything in my power to prevent anyone else from going through the same thing,” she said. “I’ve [also] donated plasma.”
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson celebrated a “significant milestone” in the country’s efforts to eliminate COVID-19 as more than 15 million people received their first shot of a vaccine.
From Kalajdziovski’s standpoint, the government’s approach of getting as many first doses into arms instead of waiting for certain segments of the population to get two shots appears to be paying off.
“We’re now in our third lockdown. It’s been a bleak 10 months in a lot of ways, but the vaccination part of that, at least, is finally this wondrous light that we’re able to see in the moment,” she said.
And now the Toronto native wants to help out there, too. She just finished her training as a volunteer vaccinator.
“I think I’ll feel quite emotional when I do my first vaccination, which I am looking forward to,” she said.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
