Propelled in part by the wildly contagious Omicron variant, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000.
The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Indianapolis, San Francisco, or Charlotte, N.C.
“It is an astronomically high number. If you had told most Americans two years ago as this pandemic was getting going that 900,000 Americans would die over the next few years, I think most people would not have believed it,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
He lamented that most of the deaths happened after the vaccine gained authorization.
“We got the medical science right. We failed on the social science. We failed on how to help people get vaccinated, to combat disinformation, to not politicize this,” Jha said. “Those are the places where we have failed as America.”
Just 64 per cent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, or about 212 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We have underestimated our enemy here, and we have under-prepared to protect ourselves,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We’ve learned a tremendous amount of humility in the face of a lethal and contagious respiratory virus.”
Prediction of 1 million deaths by April
Nor is COVID-19 finished with the United States: Jha predicted the U.S. will reach 1 million deaths by April.
“I think it’s important for us not to be numbed. Each one of those numbers is someone,” said the Rev. Gina Anderson-Cloud, senior pastor of Fredericksburg United Methodist Church in Virginia. “Those are mothers, fathers, children, our elders.”
The milestone came as Omicron is loosening its grip on the country.
New cases per day day have plunged by almost half since mid-January, when they hit a record-shattering peak of more than 800,000.
Cases have been declining in 49 out of 50 states over the past two weeks, by Johns Hopkins’ count, and the 50th state, Maine, reported that confirmed infections are falling there, too, dropping sharply over the past week.
Also, the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has declined 15 per cent since mid-January to about 124,000.
But deaths are still running high at more than 2,400 per day on average, the most since last winter. And they are on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.
While public health officials have expressed hope that the worst of Omicron is coming to an end, they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge.
–From The Associated Press, last updated at 6 p.m. ET
What’s happening across Canada
WATCH | Ottawa’s top police officer talks about how his force is responding to protesters in the city’s core:
About 150 additional police officers will be on patrol in Ottawa as the city braces for another weekend of protest against COVID-19 mandates. Officers will be addressing ‘unlawful threatening conduct’ in the most affected neighbourhoods, says the city’s police Chief Peter Sloly 1:56
With lab-based testing capacity deeply strained and increasingly restricted, experts say true case counts are likely far higher than reported. Hospitalization data at the regional level is also evolving, with several provinces saying they will report figures that separate the number of people in hospital because of COVID-19 from those in hospital for another medical issue who also test positive for COVID-19.
For more information on what is happening in your community — including details on outbreaks, testing capacity and local restrictions — click through to the regional coverage below.
WATCH | Toronto counter-protesters, health-care workers stand in solidarity:
Toronto counter-protesters, health-care workers stand in solidarity
9 hours ago
Duration 6:31
Dr. Philip Berger and a group of health-care workers in Toronto are organizing to stand up for their right to a safe workplace, free from harassment. 6:31
The preparations come as health officials in both provinces said Friday that COVID-19 hospitalizations had declined. In Ontario, a provincial COVID-19 dashboard on Friday showed a total of 2,634 in hospital testing positive — down by 163 from a day earlier — with 517 people in the province’s intensive care units. The hospital cases are down from more than 3,500 a week ago.
In Quebec, a daily COVID-19 report on Friday showed 2,541 hospitalizations — down by 96 from a day earlier — with 184 people in intensive care. The two provinces, which have seen significant strain on health systems amid the Omicron wave of infection, are both engaged in gradual easing of restrictions.
Ontario on Friday reported 60 additional deaths, while Quebec saw 42 new deaths.
WATCH | P.E.I.’s top doctor on easing restrictions and living with COVID-19:
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison says P.E.I. will soon have to adjust to living with COVID-19, safely
1 day ago
Duration 6:46
Morrison says P.E.I. will begin easing COVID-19 restrictions in the coming weeks, but will do so safely and in accordance with scientific data. 6:46
In Prince Edward Island, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison said this week that the province is looking at how it will ease restrictions and a broader reopening.
“For us, certainly, some of the first easing will be around isolation measures, larger gathering numbers, more recreational games,” Morrison told CBC’s Louise Martin, adding that provinces are all moving toward “living with COVID” and that will happen on the Island. More details are expected next week, the top public health official said, noting that mask-wearing won’t be among the first measures to be eased.
In the Prairie provinces, premiers in Saskatchewan and Alberta are moving to ease restrictions, with a roadmap for Alberta’s plan expected next week.
“After two years of this, we simply cannot continue to rely on the blunt instrument of damaging restrictions as a primary tool to cope with a disease that will likely be with us for the rest of our lives,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Thursday during a Facebook live event. Kenney had previously said that he didn’t expect the province’s vaccine pass program to last beyond the end of March.
Alberta’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, said it will be possible to remove restrictions after the latest wave of the pandemic, fuelled by the Omicron variant, subsides.
WATCH | ‘I believe after the Omicron wave has subsided, the risk of our system becoming overwhelmed will be substantially reduced,’ Alberta’s top doctor says:
COVID-19 will not go away, says Alberta’s top doc
1 day ago
Duration 2:07
Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, says the province will at some point need to move away from a COVID-19 pandemic response into an endemic phase. 2:07
Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, where COVID-19 related hospitalizations are at their highest level since the pandemic began, Premier Scott Moe said he’s committed to ending all COVID-19 restrictions soon. Moe said in a video posted to social media that COVID-19 is not going away, but people are done with having to follow public health orders, so “normalizing” the virus and learning to live with it is the achievable option.
The Saskatchewan Medical Association, however, is warning that loosening health measures would strain the province’s health-care system.
Manitoba officials had previously announced that some restrictions — including rules around private gatherings — will be relaxed next week. The province had 29 fewer cases of COVID-19 in hospitals on Friday, for a total of 707 COVID-19 patients. The number of those in ICUs has dropped by two to 52.
In the North, Yukon Premier Sandy Silver announced a plan to “slowly, carefully” begin easing restrictions, starting this weekend — provided COVID-19 hospitalizations and other key indicators don’t rise. The premier also urged people to do what they can to slow transmission of COVID-19, noting that an uptick could put major pressure on the territory’s health-care capacity.
In British Columbia, health officials said Thursday there were two new COVID-19 outbreaks at health-care facilities in the province for a total of 56, most of them in long-term care homes.
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 3:30 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
A vaccination pass is signed and stamped after a person got vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus in Vienna, Austria on Friday. (Lisa Leutner/The Associated Press)
As of Friday evening, roughly 390 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to a tracking tool from Johns Hopkins University. The reported global death toll stood at more than 5.72 million.
In Europe, a law requiring most adults in Austria to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is ready to take effect, but the sense of urgency that accompanied its announcement in November has largely evaporated. Few other countries look likely to go as far as Austria as attention turns to loosening pandemic-related restrictions.
The mandate for people 18 and older to get vaccinated — the first of its kind in Europe — cleared its last legislative hurdle Thursday night. It’s expected to become law in the coming days but it will be some time before Austrians notice any practical change. It isn’t clear when or even whether the toughest part of the plan, which was watered down from the initial proposal, will take effect.
The Austrian mandate — which will exempt pregnant women, people who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons and those who have recently recovered from COVID-19 — was conceived as cases caused by the Delta variant surged amid concern that the country’s vaccination rate was low for western Europe. At present, 69 per cent of the population is considered fully vaccinated.
The decision to move forward with the mandate sparked strong opposition and protest from some in Austria. Officials argue that even with the now-dominant Omicron variant causing milder illness and Austria preparing to ease some restrictions, the mandate makes sense.
“The vaccine mandate won’t immediately help us break the Omicron wave, but that wasn’t the goal of this law,” Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein told parliament Thursday. “The vaccine mandate should help protect us from the next waves and, above all, from the next variants.”
Not everyone agrees. “I don’t really see the added value of the vaccine mandate at this point,” said Gerald Gartlehner, an epidemiologist at the Danube University Krems. He argued that Omicron’s highly infectious nature and milder symptoms have changed things and that much of the Austrian population now has immunity, either via vaccination or infection.
In the Asia-Pacific region, India’s official COVID-19 death toll crossed 500,000 on Friday — a level some data analysts said was breached last year but was obscured by inaccurate surveys and unaccounted dead in the hinterlands, where millions remain vulnerable to the disease.
The country, which has the fourth-highest tally of deaths globally, recorded 400,000 deaths by July 2021 after the devastating outbreak from the Delta variant of the coronavirus, according to official data. Some experts believe the figures are much higher.
Children follow social distancing as a COVID-19 safety protocol before entering their respective classes after the schools resumed physical classes in Kolkata, India. (Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images)
In the Americas, people enrolled in the U.S. government’s Medicare program can get over-the-counter COVID-19 tests for free starting in early spring, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said on Thursday.
In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia said citizens will be required to take the booster shot to be able to travel abroad starting Feb. 9, state media reported.
In Africa, health officials in South Africa on Thursday reported 3,266 new cases of COVID-19 and 82 deaths. The update came a day before health officials held a briefing explaining a recent shift in the government’s COVID-19 isolation policies.
-From Reuters, CBC News and The Associated Press, last updated at 2:15 p.m. ET
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.
