Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island joined the list of provinces pushing back the return to in-class learning on Tuesday, with officials in the three provinces saying students will learn at home until at least Jan. 17.
When students do return to island classrooms, there will be masking requirements and additional testing, officials said.
“This was a challenging decision that was based on balancing safety and the overall health and well-being of children,” Dr. Heather Morrison, Prince Edward Island‘s chief public health officer, said in a statement.
The island, which has a high vaccination rate and no COVID-19 deaths to date, is seeing rising case numbers, with 222 new cases on Wednesday. Three people were in hospital being treated for COVID-19, with one person in the ICU.
“It’s not our intention to stay in this restriction situation for any longer than we need to,” Premier Dennis King said Tuesday, as the province was extending a slew of restrictions. “The ‘when’ will be determined by the science, the ‘how’ — that is what we’re working on.”
WATCH | Premier on what’s next for P.E.I.:
Premier King says he’ll change COVID-19 measures if science supports it
2 days ago
Duration 7:33
P.E.I. Premier Dennis King joins CBC News: Compass to discuss the province’s decision to extend school closures and temporary COVID-19 measures to at least Jan. 17. 7:33
In Nova Scotia, the premier said it was a difficult decision to delay reopening to Jan. 17, but promised that staff and students will be safe when they go back to in-class learning.
Tim Houston said ventilation systems will be improved and that his hope is that every student will have access to a 3-ply mask, “possibly even sitting on their desks waiting for them.”
“There will be COVID in schools,” he said during a briefing. “Everyone should take precautions knowing there is lots of COVID around the province.”
There are currently 45 people being treated in Nova Scotia hospitals with COVID-19. Houston said none of them are children.
Students in Manitoba will also begin the new year with online education. The province had previously announced it would delay the return to school until Jan. 10. But on Tuesday, officials announced students would do one week of remote learning as well.
Some children will be able to learn in person, officials said, including students with special needs and children of some essential workers.
WATCH | Houston says schools offer more than academics:
‘The best place for our children is in school,’ says N.S. premier
19 hours ago
Duration 1:22
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston apologizes for pushing back school reopening to Jan. 17, acknowledging that schools offer everything from food to warmth for many children in the province. 1:22
“We know that our youth learn best in a classroom setting. It is our goal to ensure they can return to the classroom as quickly as possible,” Premier Heather Stefanson said.
Alberta’s education minister confirmed Wednesday that kids in that province in kindergarten through Grade 12 will return to school, as planned, on Jan. 10. Adriana LaGrange said during a briefing that the situation today is very different from at other points during the pandemic, given the addition of vaccines.
“Approximately 85 per cent of youth between the ages of 12 and 17 have received at least one vaccine dose and around 80 per cent have received two,” she said. LaGrange said while kids aged five to 11 have only been eligible for the shot since late November, 37 per cent already have at least one dose.
WATCH | LaGrange explains Alberta’s return to school:
Kids learn best in class, says Alberta education minister
15 hours ago
Duration 2:02
Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange says kids will return safely to school as planned on Jan. 10, and explains why the province made the decision. 2:02
In Ontario, meanwhile, many students returned to remote school on Wednesday, as school boards across the province launched online learning.
-From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 3 p.m. ET
What’s happening across Canada
WATCH | Trudeau makes appeal to the unvaccinated:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pleads with the unvaccinated to get the shot
19 hours ago
Duration 2:12
Trudeau said that the best way out of the pandemic is still for Canadians to get their vaccines as soon as possible 2:12
With testing capacity strained, 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 plan to 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 detail on what is happening in your community — including details on health systems, test positivity rates and local restrictions — click through to the regional coverage below.
Across the North, COVID-19 is now present in half of Nunavut’s communities, the territory’s top doctor said Wednesday, as officials reported 231 active cases.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kami Kandola, the chief public health officer in the Northwest Territories, said on Tuesday that Omicron is now the dominant variant in the territory.
“COVID-19 infections are now in multiple communities and for the first time, there are COVID-19 infections in every region of the territory,” she said, noting that the number of active cases in the territory has doubled since New Year’s Eve.
In Central Canada, Quebec on Wednesday reported 39 additional deaths and 1,750 hospitalizations. Officials also reported 14,486 new COVID-19 cases today and say about 28 per cent of tests came back positive — the same test-positivity rate as the prior day.
The update comes a day after Quebec officials announced a plan to restrict access to PCR tests for COVID-19 as the province faces increasing strain on the health system. People who are considered “high risk” — including people in hospital, long-term care, shelter systems, correctional facilities and remote communities — will still be able to access the lab-based tests, officials said.
Ontario health officials on Wednesday reported 14 additional deaths and 2,081 hospitalizations. The province also reported 11,582 additional cases, with a test positivity rate of 28.1 per cent.
Meanwhile, the health system in the province is preparing for widespread measures, including patient and staff transfers, to deal with a growing wave of COVID-19 that’s infecting people at an unprecedented rate. The Ontario government announced a series of measures Monday including business and school closures to beat back the Omicron variant spread that’s expected to infect more people.
In Atlantic Canada, COVID-19 caseloads continue to pile up in Newfoundland and Labrador with 479 new cases Wednesday, with three people in hospital, two more than yesterday.
Prince Edward Island currently has three people in hospital with COVID-19, with one patient in the ICU. The province reported 222 new cases Wednesday.
New Brunswick health officials on Wednesday reported 56 people in hospital with COVID-19, no change from Tuesday. There are 16 people in the ICU. A total of 779 new cases were reported, along with three additional deaths.
Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia, health officials reported that there are currently 45 people being treated in hospital with COVID-19, with eight in the ICU. There were 842 new cases reported.
In the Prairie provinces, a spokesperson for Saskatchewan‘s Ministry of Education says more than 1.4 million rapid COVID-19 tests have been distributed through elementary schools, and an additional 250,000 tests were recently sent to schools. The province is encouraging students and staff to take rapid tests before attending class.
Saskatchewan, the only province in Canada not to extend the holiday break for students in the face of surging COVID-19 cases (along with the territory of Yukon), reported 105 COVID-19 patients in hospital on Wednesday, with 13 in the ICU. There were 537 new cases.
Alberta, which has a daily positivity rate of 36.9 per cent, currently has 470 patients in hospital with COVID-19 and 72 in the ICU. There were 4,752 new cases reported Wednesday and 11 additional deaths.
In Manitoba, 252 are currently being treated in hospital for COVID-19, with 30 in the ICU. There were 1,790 new cases reported Wednesday, with a daily positivity rate of 40.3 per cent.
In British Columbia, officials reported no new deaths Wednesday. There are 317 people being treated in hospital for the virus, with 83 in ICU. The province reported 3,798 new cases.
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 6 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
WATCH | U.S. reports more than 1 million cases in single day:
U.S. reports more than 1 million COVID-19 cases in a single day
1 day ago
Duration 2:04
Shattering records, the U.S. recorded more than one million cases of COVID-19 in a single day. Experts warn that testing backlogs mean the real number of Americans infected with COVID-19 is likely much higher. 2:04
As of Wednesday evening, roughly 297.1 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracking system. The reported global death toll stood at more than 5.4 million.
In the Americas, U.S. health officials said Wednesday they are not changing the qualifications for being “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19, but they are urging Americans to stay “up to date” on their protection against the virus by getting booster shots when eligible.
The move to keep the existing definition of fully vaccinated — either two doses of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna or a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — comes as health officials warned of waning protections from the initial doses. They are encouraging Americans to get additional doses to stave off serious illness and death from the Delta and Omicron variants.
Walmart will now provide up to one week of paid time-off if a worker contracts COVID-19, instead of its earlier policy for up to two weeks, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States with 1.6 million workers, is among the first major retailers to reduce paid leave for COVID-19, and could serve as a bellwether for other major employers.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Hong Kong authorities announced a two-week ban on flights from the United States and seven other countries and held 2,500 passengers on a cruise ship for coronavirus testing Wednesday as the city attempted to stem an emerging Omicron outbreak. The two-week ban on passenger flights from Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the United States will take effect Sunday and continue until Jan. 21.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam also announced that restaurant dining will be forbidden after 6 p.m. for two weeks starting Friday. Game arcades, bars and beauty salons must also close during that period.
“We have to contain the pandemic to ensure that there will not be a major outbreak in the community again,” Lam said at a news conference, adding that the city is “on the verge” of another surge.
In the Middle East, coronavirus infections are surging across several Gulf Arab states, with the daily number of cases more than doubling in Saudi Arabia over two days to more than 2,500 and crossing the 1,000-level in Qatar and Kuwait.
In Africa, health officials in South Africa on Tuesday reported 8,078 new cases of COVID-19 and 139 additional deaths.
As of today the cumulative number of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> cases identified in SA is 3 483 590 with 8 078 new cases reported. Today 139 deaths have been reported bringing the total to 91 451 deaths. The cumulative number of recoveries now stand at 3 328 246 with a recovery rate of 93% <a href=”https://t.co/YqoasjOrvi”>pic.twitter.com/YqoasjOrvi</a>
In Europe, Italy on Wednesday made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for people over the age of 50, one of very few European countries to take such a step, in an attempt to ease pressure on its health service and reduce fatalities.
Italy has registered more than 138,000 coronavirus deaths since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second highest toll in Europe after Britain.
People who test positive for COVID-19 on rapid lateral flow tests will not need to confirm their results with a follow-up PCR test if they are not showing symptoms, the U.K. Health Security Agency said on Wednesday.
Britain is reporting record daily case numbers, and the UKHSA said that the high prevalence meant the chance of a false positive from a lateral flow device (LFD) was low. Lateral flow tests are rapid tests that can be done at home, without the help of medical professionals.
The move could also reduce the burden on the testing system, and reduce confusion if the test results contradict each other. At current levels of prevalence, officials say a positive LFD result is likely to be accurate, even if a follow-up PCR were negative.
“While cases of COVID continue to rise, this tried-and-tested approach means that LFDs can be used confidently to indicate COVID-19 infection without the need for PCR confirmation,” said UKHSA chief executive Dr. Jenny Harries.
While the move comes into place on Jan. 11 in England, people who develop COVID-19 symptoms should continue to take a PCR test, UKHSA said.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 6 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
