California issuing waivers allowing hospitals to temporarily bypass the nation’s only strict nurse-to-patient ratios as COVID-19 cases surge.
EU makes a deal for 300 million additional doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
U.K. regulators approve Moderna vaccine, the 3rd to be OK’d for use in the country.
Ontario reported more than 4,200 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, though health officials noted that hundreds of the cases were from previous days.
The province reported 4,249 new cases of COVID-19, with 26 additional deaths. Health Minister Christine Elliott’s office said in a statement, however, that approximately 450 of the cases were from previous days and were reported Friday because of a “data upload delay” in Toronto.
Due to a data upload delay at Toronto Public Health, approximately 450 additional cases have been included in today’s count. These cases were primarily from January 5th and 6th.
Speaking Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford reiterated his call for people to follow public health measures as “hospital capacity is stretched to new limits.”
The latest update comes a day after parents and students heard that elementary students in southern Ontario will be learning at home for at least another two weeks.
The province said Thursday that elementary students in 27 southern Ontario regions will continue with online learning until Jan. 25. In northern Ontario, elementary students will return to class as scheduled on Jan. 11, but the broader shutdown in the sprawling region will be extended another two weeks to align with the rest of the province.
Canada’s most populous province has seen rising case numbers in several communities and the strain on the health-care system is mounting.
Hospitals in hard-hit regions are being told to prepare to transfer patients within their region and even outside it, CBC’s Mike Crawley reported.
In a memo dated Thursday and obtained by CBC News, Ontario Health president and CEO Matthew Anderson said all hospitals “must be ready to accept patient transfers when directed by their regional COVID-19 response structure.”
Neighbouring Quebec, which recently updated its restrictions and announced a four-week curfew, is also facing a strained health system. As of Thursday, the province was reporting 1,380 COVID-19 hospitalizations, with 202 people in intensive care units.
Quebec, which reported 2,519 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday and 74 deaths, is opening elementary schools as planned on Jan. 11, with high schools to open a week later.
In Atlantic Canada, New Brunswick officials expressed concern after reporting 24 additional COVID-19 cases Thursday, a slight decrease from Wednesday’s single-day record of 31.
“The current situation is the worst we have seen so far during this pandemic,” said New Brunswick’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell.
New Brunswick — like the other Atlantic provinces — has seen far fewer cases than Central and Western Canada, with just 717 total cases reported since the pandemic began. But with numbers rising, health officials urged people to follow the rules, be honest with contact tracers, and support people who are in isolation because of a positive test or a contact.
Premier Blaine Higgs said Friday that if people follow the rules, the province should be able to avoid even tighter restrictions.
“This thing could get away from us and that is exactly what’s happening in other provinces,” he told Information Morning Fredericton.
In Nova Scotia, health officials reported four new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, while Prince Edward Island reported one new case. There were no new cases reported in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Health officials in Manitoba, reported 201 additional COVID-19 cases on Thursday, with 12 additional deaths. Restrictions on gatherings and business openings are set to expire Friday, however Premier Brian Pallister said earlier this week that he didn’t expect any significant change.
“We still have a high number of cases in acute care. We still have surgeries and diagnostics being deferred,” Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba’s acting deputy chief of provincial public health, said during a conference call Thursday.
Saskatchewan, meanwhile, reported 334 new cases of COVID-19 and three additional deaths on Thursday.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said restrictions in place since mid-December banning private gatherings will remain until at least Jan. 21. Classrooms, however, will reopen as planned on Monday.
In central Alberta, the Red Deer hospital is feeling the strain of rising COVID-19 caseloads.
“Our intensive care has now overflowed into coronary care, which means patients in coronary care are now being managed in other areas of the hospital,” said Dr. Kym Jim, an internal medicine specialist at Red Deer Regional Hospital.
Across the North, there were three new cases reported in Yukon on Thursday, with no new cases in the Northwest Territories. In Nunavut, Agnico Eagle said in a news release Thursday that a worker had tested positive for COVID-19 in late December and been flown to their home province and instructed to follow local public health rules.
British Columbia‘s top doctor, meanwhile, said COVID-19 restrictions that were set to expire Friday have been extended to Feb. 5.
Dr. Bonnie Henry announced the extension while reporting eight more deaths and 761 new cases of COVID-19, saying the spike is partly related to changes in streamlining its reporting. However, the curve of the second wave in B.C. is trending up again, Henry said Thursday.
“If we see positive trends in our cases and our hospitalizations … we will monitor that as well,” said Henry. “Right now, we need to hold the line.”
As of early Friday morning, before Ontario reported its updated figures, Canada had reported 635,143 cases of COVID-19, with 80,289 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 16,579.
The Canadian economy, meanwhile, posted its first monthly loss of jobs since April in December amid tightened public health restrictions to slow a resurgence in the pandemic.
Statistics Canada said Friday the economy lost 63,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate edged up to 8.6 per cent compared with 8.5 per cent in November. The job losses ended a streak of monthly job gains that began in May, when initial restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the pandemic began to ease.
-From CBC News and The Canadian Press, updated at 10:20 a.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
A nurse dons personal protective equipment to attend to a patient in a COVID-19 intensive care unit at Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Community Hospital on Wednesday in the Willowbrook neighbourhood of Los Angeles. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
As of early Friday morning, more than 88.1 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 49.1 million of those considered recovered or resolved, according to Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 case tracking tool. The global death toll stood at more than 1.9 million.
In the Americas, the U.S. alone has seen more than 21.5 million cases of COVID-19 and 365,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. More than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported on Thursday alone, according to the U.S.-based university. The New York Times, which has also been tracking COVID cases and deaths in the U.S, put the number of deaths reported Thursday even higher, at 4,111.
Facing a massive surge in coronavirus cases, California has been issuing waivers allowing hospitals to temporarily bypass the nation’s only strict nurse-to-patient ratios.
Nurses say that being forced to take on more patients is pushing them to the brink of burnout and affecting patient care.
At least 250 of about 400 hospitals in California have been granted 60-day waivers. They allow ICU nurses to care for three instead of two people and emergency room nurses to oversee six patients instead of three.
Nurses in other states have demanded law-mandated ratios like those in California but so far have failed to get them.
Brazil, which has seen more than 7.9 million cases of COVID-19, passed a grim milestone as its death toll surpassed 200,0000. The health ministry said Thursday that the country had 1,524 deaths in the previous 24 hours, rising to a total of 200,498 for the pandemic.
Mexico, meanwhile, continues to see record increases in coronavirus cases, with a 24-hour caseload of 13,734 confirmed infections setting a new high for the second consecutive day.
In Europe, the executive branch of the European Union has secured 300 million extra doses of the coronavirus Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Speaking during a news conference in Brussels on Friday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the agreement will double the number of doses ordered by the 27-nation bloc. The EU commission later said in a statement that the commission has proposed to member states to purchase an additional 200 million doses of the vaccine, with the option to acquire another 100 million doses.
“This would enable the EU to purchase up to 600 million doses of this vaccine, which is already being used across the EU. The additional doses will be delivered starting in the second quarter of 2021,” the EU said.
Combined with the contract finalized with Moderna — the second vaccine authorized so far in the region — Von der Leyen said the EU now has the capacity to vaccinate 380 million people, more than 80 per cent of the EU population.
The news from the EU comes as Britain authorized a coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna, the third to be licensed for use in the country.
The Department of Health said Friday that the vaccine meets the regulator’s “strict standards of safety, efficacy and quality.”
Britain has ordered 10 million doses of the vaccine, though it is not expected to be delivered to the U.K. until spring.
So far Britain has inoculated 1.5 million people with two other vaccines.
“Vaccines are the key to releasing us all from the grip of this pandemic, and today’s news is yet another important step towards ending lockdown and returning to normal life,” Business Secretary Alok Sharma said.
Germany, meanwhile, reported a record 1,188 daily COVID-19 deaths on Friday, only days after further tightening a national lockdown.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Japan is considering extending a state of emergency from the Tokyo metropolitan area to other regions as cases increase, a move that could heighten the risk of a double-dip recession for the world’s third-largest economy.
A police officer asks people to refrain from going out after 8 p.m. in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo on Friday during the first day under a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)
Beijing shut places of worship and authorities restricted access to a highway to the city of Shijiazhuang, which is battling a new cluster of infections.
Travellers to Australia will have to show a negative COVID-19 test before they can board their plane, as Brisbane went into lockdown after the discovery of a case of a virulent new variant.
The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, meanwhile, reported its first COVID-19 death 10 months after initially detecting the virus and managing to keep the disease under control by largely sealing off the country.
In the Middle East, Israel tightened a national lockdown in a bid to curb a sharp rise in new cases, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising that all Israeli adults could be vaccinated by the end of March.
South Africa, the hardest-hit nation in Africa, said this week it will import 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to inoculate the country’s health workers.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 7:30 a.m. ET
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
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Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
