The latest:
The border between Canada and the United States will remain closed to non-essential travel for at least another month.
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair announced late Friday that the closure has been extended to March 21 — precisely one year after the world’s longest undefended border was first shut down to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Since then, the closure has been extended month by month.
With more contagious variants of the coronavirus spreading across the continent, Friday’s extension is unlikely to be the last.
WATCH | Navigating Canada’s new restrictions on airline passengers:
From hotel quarantines to mandatory PCR testing, we hear from two panellists about how they are experiencing Ottawa’s latest and strictest travel measures. Rohan Jumani flew to India for his father’s funeral and now faces these new measures, and Richard Vanderlubbe is the president of the tripcentral.ca travel agency. 8:25
Blair tweeted that the government will continue to base its decisions on the border “on the best public health advice to keep Canadians safe.”
The border has remained open for essential travel throughout the pandemic in a bid to avoid disrupting the flow of food, medical supplies and other crucial goods between the two countries.
The Public Health Agency of Canada released modelling on Friday suggesting that while infections continue to decline nationally, the spread of virus mutations threatens to reverse that progress.
Canada’s chief public health officer said there are currently fewer than 33,000 active cases in Canada, a 60 per cent drop compared with a month ago.
But with more contagious variants now detected in all provinces, Dr. Theresa Tam said Canada may not be able to avoid a rapid acceleration of daily cases, predicted to hit 20,000 by mid-March, without continued vigilance.
What’s happening in Canada
As of 1:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, Canada had reported 842,635 cases of COVID-19, with 31,806 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 21,618.
Ontario reported 1,228 new cases and 28 more deaths on Saturday.
In Quebec, health officials reported 769 new cases and 14 additional deaths.
Quebec City’s public health department says it may have detected the first local case of a COVID-19 variant, at an elementary school in the city’s Cap-Rouge neighbourhood.
The Marguerite d’Youville school has been closed indefinitely, and the school population of 283 students and more than 50 staff members are to be tested in the next 48 hours. They must remain in isolation until further notice from public health authorities.
New Brunswick saw three more cases, all in the Edmundston region.
Newfoundland and Labrador reported 38 new cases, all within the Eastern Health region. Health officials in that region are recommending COVID-19 testing for anyone in the Mount Pearl Senior High School community, after an outbreak was declared there on Feb 7.
WATCH | Testing ramps up as N.L. struggles to contain outbreak:
Janice Fitzgerald, the chief medical officer of health for Newfoundland and Labrador, says labs are now processing more than six times the number of tests every 24 hours than they were two weeks ago. 1:08
In Nova Scotia, six people have been fined $1,000 each following two social gatherings in Halifax early Saturday.
Nunavut confirmed six new cases in Arviat. It’s the eighth day in a row that new cases have been reported in the hard-hit community. With one recovery, Arviat now has 30 active cases.
The Northwest Territories announced dozens of new clinic dates in communities across the territory where residents can receive their second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine — or their first dose, if they missed the clinic’s first visit.
What’s happening around the world
As of Saturday, more than 110.8 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 62.5 million of those cases listed as recovered on a tracking site run by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 2.4 million.
In Asia, thousands of marshals have been hired to enforce mask wearing across India’s financial capital of Mumbai, which is battling a recent spike in cases.
In Europe, Denmark has temporarily closed some border crossing points with Germany and stepped up checks at others due to a spike in COVID-19 cases and a rise in virus variants in the northern German town of Flensburg, near the Danish border.
In the Americas, Argentinian Health Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia resigned following reports that people had been able to use connections to get access to COVID-19 vaccines to which they were not entitled.
In Africa, Ghana is expecting a first delivery of just over 350,000 AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine shots by the end of next week.
