TORONTO —
News that Canada is behind other countries in their COVID-19 vaccination rollout schemes – while in a critical point in the pandemic – has experts worried the country won’t meet the September 2021vaccination goal set by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The vast geography of the country, including remote communities where the logistics of flying in healthcare is complicated –as well as tricky storage requirements of the Pfizer vaccine, were initially pointed out as roadblocks to the rollout.
But with the arrival of Moderna’s easier-to-store vaccine, and Health Canada reviewing more vaccine products on the horizon, experts say governments need to shift focus.
“I think there was a lot of attention given to getting vaccines into the freezers, but not enough attention from freezer to arm,” biostatician Ryan Imgrund, who works with Ottawa Public Health, said in an email to CTV News.ca Wednesday.
“They were so worried about the cold storage requirement that they seemingly forgot that the vaccine needs to come out and actually get in to people,” he said.
It was a sentiment echoed by the Dean of health sciences at Queens University and former federal minister of health Dr. Jane Philpott.
“We need to empty those freezers… there’s no point in pacing ourselves on this,” Philpott said on CTV’s News Channel Wednesday. “That’s what really is going to turn this pandemic around, is getting people the vaccine protection they need.”
The federal government released 500,000 doses of both the Pfizer and Modern vaccines back in December, but the actual distribution and rollout of the inoculations is at the discretion of provinces and territories.
Ontario’s stunted rollout
Ontario has been criticised repeatedly for its vaccination initiatives having trouble getting off the ground, as the province surpassed 200,000 total COVID-19 cases Wednesday.
The Ontario Liberal party called for the military to be used to step up Ontario’s vaccination phases Wednesday, after Premier Doug Ford’s government took some significant heat for shuttering vaccination stations during the Christmas holidays.
“I am urging the premier to request immediate assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) who are well-positioned to provide important logistical leadership and support,” Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said in a statement.
Ret. Gen. Rick Hillier, who was tapped by Ford to lead Ontario’s vaccination rollout, admitted that halting vaccinations over the holidays was a mistake, and that the taskforce’s initial scheme of holding back the 35,000 second doses of the Pfizer vaccine also slowed them down.
Hillier rebutted claims that vaccines were languishing in freezers on CTV News Ottawa’s Morning Live show Wednesday – instead claiming that the issue was one of supply chains.
“Yesterday, we vaccinated more than 10,000 people in the province of Ontario, we will do the same and more again today. We are at the point now where we will start running out of vaccines as the people who need the second shot [of the Pfizer vaccine] start coming back,” he said.
Hillier said the vaccine taskforce plans to administer 55,000 doses of 161 long-term care homes in the regions of Toronto, Peel, York and Windsor-Essex by Jan. 21.
There has been no deadline set for the rest of the province.
Ottawa’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Vera Etches announced on Twitter Tuesday that they would begin vaccinating people outside of the Ottawa Hospital – which had been the central distribution hub – and directly into long-term care homes.
Ontario’s Minister of Health Christine Elliot said Wednesday that 60,000 vaccines have been administered in Ontario so far.
In a statement emailed to CTV News.ca Wednesday, the Ontario Ministry of Health said that the province’s vaccine rollout is “well underway” and that it remains committed to administering them “as safely and efficiently as possible.”
“We have received 95,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine so far, that are currently being administered at 19 hospitals – soon to be expanded to 28 – continuing until the end of March 2021,” the statement reads.
The Ministry of Health also noted in its statement that Ontario recently received 53,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine which will “be used for vaccinations at long-term care homes and retirement homes.”
“We continue to ask all Ontarians to remain vigilant and continue following public health measures.”
The sense of urgency is a good sign, Philpott says.
“I’m pleased to see that over the last 24-48 hours the pace is definitely picking up across the country,” she said. “Ontario is seeing almost a doubling of the rate of vaccines getting out of freezers and into arms, and we need to continue doing that.”
Philpott says she is hopeful that a “significant number” of vaccines will be arriving this week and next week to pick up the pace.
So far approximate 4,100 first-dose appointments have been made for Jan. 4 to 10, with 2,000 more available.
The province is hoping to vaccinate around 40,000 people by the end of January.
Quebec, which had its long-term care homes decimated by COVID-19, took the extra step of putting vaccine distribution centres inside of the homes in an effort to vaccinate residents.
British Columbia also put vaccination distribution directly into long-term care homes, with 24,139 people vaccinated as of Sunday.
B.C expects approximately 792,000 doses of the Pfizer and Modern vaccines to be distributed through the end of March.
The province released their updated vaccination plan Monday – which targets populations like seniors living in the community who are at least 80 years old and Indigenous seniors who are at least 65.
The province received approximately 46,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and said their continued rollout will depend on the available supply.
Nova Scotia is opening COVID-19 immunization clinics to help achieve its goal of vaccinating at least 75 per cent of the population by the end of September.
The province received a combined 9,550 doses of Pfizer and Moderns vaccines and has been targeting healthcare workers in their Phase 1 rollout which runs from January to April 2021.
How can we fix it?
“A key to maximizing efficiency in these complex logistical operations is minimizing downtime or non-productive time,” said Director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering at the University of Toronto Professor Timothy Chan, in an email to CTV News.ca Wednesday.
“Retail figured out long ago that inventory sitting on shelves costs them money. The same concept applies here, except now we’re talking lives.”
Chan also criticized the petering out of vaccinations around the holidays.
“COVID doesn’t take a holiday so neither should we,” he said.
Imgrund says Ontario’s initial vaccines should have gone to long-term care facilities immediately, and noted the government’s apparent lack of preparation.
“Vaccination schedules should be made weeks before the vaccine touches ground. You can always cancel appointments. But scheduling in new ones is always difficult,” he said.
Philpott also touched on the logistics.
“Everybody has a responsibility here,” she said. “We need to ramp up the mechanisms to make sure they are delivered as quickly as possible to the people who need them.”
Chan says that fixing the problem relies on accurately identifying the “key limiting factors” or “bottlenecks.”
“Is it a lack of healthcare workers to deliver the vaccines? Is it a lack of space at the vaccination sites? Is it a lack of coordination and leadership? Right now, the only limiting factor should be our vaccine supply,” he said.
“Start a massive scheduling operation to just get people to these sites (or doses delivered to LTC homes) and start administering the vaccine around the clock if we need to,” he said.
For Ontario’s situation, Imgrund said that the province “eventually needs to get to 40,000 vaccinations per day” in order to vaccinate the entire population.
“Phase 1 is the most important phase when it comes to saving lies and reducing hospitalization…It is easier to ramp down in the future than ramp up,” he 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.
