TORONTO —
For any Canadians who spent the summer ignoring news about the novel coronavirus, now might be a good time to pay attention.
In the past two weeks, British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba have all set or come close to new daily records for the highest number of new COVID-19 cases reported in each province. On Saturday, both Ontario and Quebec recorded their largest daily figures in a month or more.
In other words, all of Canada’s five most populous provinces are being reminded that COVID-19 is still a threat – even though this is the time of year when viral diseases are least likely to be active.
“Respiratory viruses should not be circulating at all in July and August. We, with doing nothing at all, should be seeing no COVID – but we’re doing a lot, and we’re still seeing COVID,” Dr. Colin Furness, a infection control epidemiologist, said Sunday on CTV News Channel.
“That gives you a sense that the virulence of this virus is there, and it’s going to come back hard.”
But while the records and big increases may seem concerning on their own, experts warn that it’s best not to read too much into the “ongoing blips” of any day’s individual total.
“It’s important for us not to be too concerned about short-term trends, but to look at the bigger picture,” Dr. Matthew Oughton, an infectious diseases specialist at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, told CTV News Channel on Sunday.
MORE THAN 5,000 ACTIVE CASES
One way to get a sense of that bigger picture is to look at trends around the number of active COVID-19 cases. Because patients are often considered active for a week or more, these numbers are less prone to the wild swings of one-day totals.
With 367 new cases of COVID-19 reported across Canada on Saturday and only 145 new recoveries logged, Canada’s total number of active cases moved past the 5,000 mark for the first time in nearly three weeks, according to CTV News records.
However, saying the number of active cases is at its highest level in a few weeks may be misleading. Quebec has occasionally made major adjustments to its recovery figures with little explanation, including by announcing more than 23,000 new recoveries on July 16.
If those 23,000 cases were to be removed from the historical data on active cases, then Canada would not have had more than 5,000 active cases since June – until Saturday.
Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious disease specialist based in Mississauga, Ont., told CTV News Channel on Saturday that he does not see the overall state of COVID-19 activity in Canada as a significant concern, particularly because hospitalization levels have remained steady.
“It is concerning what we’re seeing out there, but in the grand scheme of things it is still overall low community transmission,” he said.
Breaking the numbers down by province and territory, though, it’s clear that the situation is not at all the same in different parts of the country.
A SECOND WAVE IN THE WEST?
Measured by active cases, B.C.’s first wave of COVID-19 peaked on April 28, when authorities knew of 717 patients in the province.
By June, that number was below 200. It stayed there until early July. The number of active cases started to slowly rise at that point, however – and in the past three weeks, the increase has been anything but slow.
On Aug. 10, B.C. passed 400 active cases. Two days later, it passed 500. Two days after that, it passed 600.
By Aug. 21, there were 824 active cases of COVID-19 in the province – more than there ever had been before. And still the number kept rising, hitting 1,014 on Aug 23. As of Friday, the last day the province publicized data, there were 982 active cases.
B.C. is one of two provinces where there are currently more active cases of COVID-19 than there were at any point during the first wave of the pandemic.
The other is Manitoba, which originally topped out just under 200 in early April. Two months after that, its active case count was down to the single digits.
But there have been big increases more recently, starting in July and continuing through August. Manitoba has not reported a decrease in the number of active cases since Aug. 19. As of Sunday, the number sat at 462 – more than double the spring peak.
Saskatchewan was on similar ground last month. The province has twice reported more than 300 active cases of COVID-19 – on back-to-back days in late July. Since then, though, the caseload has shrunk, with fewer than 100 active cases reported every day for the past week.
Although Alberta reported some of its highest single-day new case counts since April, the number of active cases there has remained well below the province’s spring peak.
For the past four weeks, Alberta has hovered between 1,000 and 1,200 active cases. That’s a lot more than the 328 active cases the province bottomed out at on June 5, but it’s far fewer than the more than 3,000 it was tracking in late April and early May.
STABILIZATION IN THE EAST AND NORTH
Whatever is happening in the West does not seem to be affecting the coronavirus situation in Central Canada, Atlantic Canada and the territories.
While Western provinces were setting new records and seeing escalating case counts, Ontario was hitting some of its lowest patient numbers since the earliest days of the pandemic. On Aug. 9, that province reported fewer than 1,000 active cases for the first time since March; the number then stayed below 1,000 for 12 days.
There has been some escalation over the past two weeks, however. There were 904 active cases of COVID-19 in Ontario on Aug. 16, 1,010 on Aug. 23, and 1,181 on Sunday.
Quebec’s numbers are a little harder to judge, because of the two major adjustments to the province’s number of recoveries, but the active case load there appears to have stopped falling and stabilized between 1,200 and 1,300 over the past week and a half.
The numbers are far smaller in Atlantic Canada, where earlier in the summer all four provinces went through periods without a single active case, only for the virus to pop back up.
As of Sunday, there were five active cases of COVID-19 in Nova Scotia, four in New Brunswick, three in Prince Edward Island and one in Newfoundland and Labrador.
There are no active cases in any of the territories; the last of the 20 known total cases was reported in Yukon on Aug. 7.
BACK-TO-SCHOOL LOOMS
Coronavirus activity is expected to ramp up in Canada as summer gives way to fall and the weather cools, driving Canadians indoors where it is easier for the virus to spread.
There are fears that this could be exacerbated by the return of children to classrooms, which is already underway in some parts of the country and will have taken place at most schools within two weeks.
Already in Quebec, approximately 20 teachers have been ordered to isolate after two educators at one high school tested positive for COVID-19. The tests occurred on a preparation day before students were allowed in.
Oughton said that although most French-language high schools in Quebec have resumed classroom instruction, it is too soon for the extent of COVID-19 spread in schools to show up in the province’s numbers.
Another concern is what will happen when COVID-19 overlaps with the traditional winter influenza season. Because the diseases caused by the two viruses present similarly, it is possible that flu symptoms could be enough for quarantines to be ordered or schools to be shut down for fear of an outbreak.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of false alarms,” Oughton said.
The Public Health Agency of Canada’s recent report of an “exceptionally low” amount of flu activity this summer provides some hope here, though. So does data from countries in the Southern Hemisphere, where flu season is already underway and record low levels of influenza are being detected.
Taken together, Oughton said, these statistics show that distancing and other measures taken to slow the spread of COVID-19 are having the same effect on influenza – reducing its transmission rate and reducing the likelihood of widespread “false alarms.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
