A new study that looks back on the first and second waves of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 says that travel restrictions barring entry to Canada did drastically reduce the number of COVID-19 cases entering the country.
However, researchers say, it still wasn’t enough to stop new outbreaks.
In the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal eLife on Tuesday, researchers with the University of British Columbia looked at public data on viral genome sequences collected in 2020 and early 2021 to find the geographic source of specific chains of COVID-19 transmission.
They found that four weeks after Canada restricted entry from most foreign nationals in March 2020, the number of COVID-19 cases crossing the border into the country had dropped 10-fold.
“COVID-19 importations were accelerating in the lead up to March 2020 but experienced a sharp and drastic decline after travel restrictions were put in place,” Angela McLaughlin, a PhD candidate in bioinformatics at UBC and the study’s lead author, said in a press release.
“The data shows that federal travel restrictions can be effective in reducing viral importations when implemented rapidly.”
But COVID-19 was already here, and travel restrictions couldn’t stop that.
The spring and summer of 2020 saw daily case levels at one of their lowest nationally, but circulation was still occurring within the country, the study outlined, with specific chains of transmission persisting into the fall of 2020.
As travel restrictions eased in November 2020, allowing more entrance into the country as well as shortened quarantine requirements, the international importation of COVID-19 cases rebounded.
Variants of concern, beginning with the Alpha variant, began to make their way into Canada. Researchers estimated 30 unique genetic sublineages of the Alpha variant, also known as B.1.1.7, had entered the country by the end of February 2021.
Numerous factors, such as the state of the global fight against COVID-19, including the emergence of these variants elsewhere in the world, make it harder for travel restrictions to have an impact later on in the pandemic, researchers said.
“Travel restrictions have a diminishing return if domestic transmission is high, if highly transmissible variants become widespread globally, or if there are many individuals exempt from travel restrictions and quarantine without access to rapid testing,” says McLaughlin.
On March 21, 2020, in response to the pandemic, the U.S. and Canada mutually closed the border to recreational travel after having already shut its borders to most non-citizens looking to enter the country.
Within a month after these restrictions, researchers found that importations of COVID-19 declined from 58.5 sublineages of the virus on average per week to just 10.3-fold lower within four weeks.
There were still “newly seeded sublineages” over the summer of 2020 as domestic transmission continued. Travel restrictions were relaxed slightly in the fall, although the U.S. land border did not re-open to non-essential travel until August 2021.
During the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020, 49 per cent of viral importations of COVID-19 into Canada likely came from the U.S., the study found, entering primarily through Quebec and Ontario.
The U.S. was still the biggest international source of COVID-19 for Canada in the second wave, according to the data, at 43 per cent. Cases from India made up 16 per cent of those that came from outside of the country in the second wave, while cases from the U.K. made up seven per cent.
If restrictions had been kept at their maximum for longer, they could’ve held off more transmission, researchers posited, but this would’ve come with consequences in other areas.
“The social and economic repercussions of travel restrictions must be weighed relative to the risk of unhampered viral importations, which have the potential to overburden the health-care system,” Mclaughlin said.
“We are now in the era of infectious disease,” Dr. Jeffrey B. Joy, an assistant professor at UBC’s department of medicine and the study’s senior author, said in the release. “This study highlights the increasing importance of genomic epidemiology, enabled by sharing of genomic sequence data, in informing and evaluating public health policy to combat current and future viral outbreaks threatening society.”
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CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
