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
TORONTO – A group of hotel service workers in Toronto is set to hold a rally today outside the Fairmont Royal York to demand salary increases as hotel costs in the city skyrocket during Taylor Swift’s concerts.
Unite Here Local 75, the union representing 8,000 hospitality workers in the Greater Toronto Area, says Royal York employees have not seen a salary increase since 2021, and have been negotiating a new contract with the hotel since 2022.
The rally comes as the megastar begins her series of six sold-out concerts in Toronto, with the last show scheduled for Nov. 23.
During show weekends, some hotel rooms and short-term rentals in Toronto are priced up to 10 times more than other weekends, with some advertised for as much as $2,000 per night.
The union says hotel workers who will be serving Swifties during her Toronto stops are bargaining for raises to keep up with the rising cost of living.
The union represents hospitality workers including food service employees, room attendants and bell persons.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to slap an across-the-board tariff of at least 10 per cent on all imports including from Canada is unlikely to apply to Canadian oil, energy experts are predicting.
The threat of the tariff is causing a lot of concern north of the border, where the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said such a tariff could take a $30-billion bite out of the Canadian economy.
Rory Johnston, a Toronto-based oil market researcher and founder of Commodity Context, said he believes there’s a very small probability that Trump’s fees would apply to Canadian oil, but it is “quite a potentially damaging one.”
“Canada is uniquely vulnerable to market pressure posed by U.S. refineries given our lack of alternative egress,” Johnston said during a panel for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute Wednesday.
Michael Catanzaro, a former Trump energy adviser, told a forum in Washington, D.C. last week that he doesn’t expect Trump’s campaign vision of energy dominance and lower energy costs will exclude Canada.
“We should double down on the fact that the U.S. and Canada together can be this powerful force,” he said at the North American Energy Preeminence Forum hosted by the right-leaning Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 8.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S. and trade comprises 60 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. A significant proportion of that comes from oil and gas.
Canada is also the largest source of U.S. energy imports, and almost all Canadian crude oil exports went to its neighbour in 2023. Most of that makes its way through pipelines to the Midwest, where the key battleground states flipped for Trump on promises of making life more affordable.
Without exemptions for Canadian crude, many experts agree that the cost at American pumps is certain to increase. It’s unlikely the Republican leader would take action that’ll make gas cost more, Johnston said.
Johnston added there could be a situation where Canada sees a boon from Trump’s tariffs. If the Republican leader puts those fees on all oil imports except Canada “that is actually a net good thing for Canadian exports.”
But all of this comes with the caveat that there’s been a rocky relationship between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump, and the Liberal government in Canada has been at odds with the Republican politically on a number of fronts including climate action and renewable energy.
Catanzaro recalled a meeting with Canadian officials after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate agreement, an international treaty to cut greenhouse gases, during his first administration — a move the president-elect has promised to repeat.
“They were very hostile to us and to the administration,” Catanzaro said.
The Canadian reaction set the bilateral relationship back for some time, Catanzaro said.
Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations, said he’s not certain the Republican leader would be willing to give a tariff concession under Trudeau.
Hampson said Trump would know that giving Canada an immediate exemption would provide Trudeau a powerful argument about his ability to negotiate with the president-elect ahead of Canada’s looming election. The Republican leader would not be happy with that outcome, given their notably rocky relationship during Trump’s first administration, Hampson added.
Trump called Trudeau “weak” and “dishonest” after the prime minister criticized the president’s 2018 tariff actions at the G7 summit in Quebec. There was another blow-up when Trudeau and other NATO leaders appeared to be on video talking about a Trump press conference the following year. Trump called the prime minister “two-faced.”
Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s then-trade representative, recounted in his book that U.S.-Canada relations were “at their lowest ebb since the failed American invasion of Upper Canada during the War of 1812.”
The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, negotiated under the first Trump administration, will come under review in 2026. Hampson said Trump could use the tariffs, or a threat of them, to force Canada into concessions.
Wilbur Ross, the former U.S. commerce secretary who was involved in the negotiation of that trilateral agreement, recently told CBC that Trump is likely to carve out exemptions for sectors such as Canadian oil and gas.
Eric Miller, president of Rideau Potomac Strategy Group, said politicians run for office in poetry and govern in prose, agreeing that wide-reaching tariffs on Canadian energy were unlikely.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
HALIFAX – The director of a democracy watchdog says that if Nova Scotia’s electoral officer had more power to levy fines, it would discourage situations such as campaign managers giving Tim Hortons gift cards to voters.
The Liberal party has complained to Elections Nova Scotia after a Progressive Conservative campaign manager in Lunenburg, N.S., handed out gift cards each good for a single cup of coffee at a drive-thru while candidate Susan Corkum-Greek greeted voters as they exited.
The campaign manager resigned earlier this week and issued a statement saying he’d handed out 25 of the $2.07 cards.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, says Nova Scotia needs law reform to permit its chief electoral officer to directly order a fine in such cases, rather than lengthy, costly and often ineffective court cases.
“We need to discourage violations of election laws, even small ones, as much as we discourage illegal parking,” he said.
He said there may be significant violations of the Elections Act where the public prosecution service should be called in, but often minor cases in provincial jurisdictions can drift on for months and end up being abandoned.
The Liberals have argued providing the gift cards violated Section 327 of the provincial Elections Act, which prohibits offering “a bribe” to influence a person’s vote.
The party has also filed a petition seeking a declaration by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court that the incident constitutes corrupt practices under the Elections Act. However, a spokesperson for the judiciary said the case won’t be heard until after the Nov. 26 election.
Conacher said law reforms in Nova Scotia could result in similar cases being dealt with summarily, as occurs with parking tickets, particularly if they are isolated and less severe.
Asked about such a potential reform, Tim Houston, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, said it’s important to keep in mind the person involved in Lunenburg was a party volunteer.
“Let’s not lose sight of the fact these are people volunteering their time to help the process …. I think it’s a very slippery slope to kind of weaponize the legal system against a party volunteer who maybe made a mistake,” he said.
Conacher said he does not think his proposal would discourage people from volunteering for political parties.
“It’s more important to discourage violations of the law. I don’t think you discourage volunteers. It just makes them pay more attention to following the rules, and as a result you get fairer elections,” he said.
The NDP and Liberal leaders didn’t immediately provide comment on the proposed law reform.
Unlike the federal system, in Nova Scotia there is no commissioner appointed to levy administrative penalties under the Nova Scotia Elections Act. Conacher said it’s preferable to have separate roles, with chief electoral officers focusing on running elections while the election commissioner focuses on monitoring any violations of the legislation.
However, he said he recognizes this system is more costly, and that it’s possible for chief electoral officers to take on the function of levying administrative fines as well.
“The lack of penalties for many violations can just encourage more violations. You don’t want to tie up the courts with all these minor things,” said Conacher.
Naomi Shelton, a spokeswoman for Elections Nova Scotia, says the Tim Hortons case remains under investigation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
