As cases of coronavirus in provinces across Canada continued to rise, health and government officials are stressing the importance of following public health measures and introducing new restrictions designed to curb its spread.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the country is at a “crossroad” in its pandemic battle and the actions of individual Canadians will decide whether there’s a massive spike in COVID-19 cases coming.
“With minimal controls, the virus is capable of surging into a very sharp and intense peak because most Canadians don’t have immunity to the virus,” Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said during a news conference in Ottawa.
A new model presented by Canada’s top doctor on Tuesday, shows that the epidemic is accelerating nationally. They warned that if Canadians don’t step up preventative measures, the virus could spread out of control and trigger a wave of infections bigger than the first one.
Preventative measures include enhanced sanitation and hand washing, physical distancing and wearing masks.
Short-term projections show there could be up to 155,795 cases and up to 9,300 deaths by Oct. 3.
Minister of Health Patty Hajdu looks on as Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam responds to a question during a news conference in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Meanwhile in Ontario, officials were expected to detail the province’s fall COVID-19 plan but instead, Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliot said those details will be laid out in stages in the coming days.
“If we lay it all out at once, the message isn’t going to get out to people,” Ford said at his daily news conference Tuesday, as he also introduced “the largest and most comprehensive flu campaign in Canada’s history.”
According to Ford, the first part of the plan is pushing people to get their flu shots this fall.
“We’ve ordered 5.1 million doses for the entire province and we are working to order even more,” he said, adding that the province will spend $70 million on the doses.
Ontario reported an additional 478 cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the most of any single day since May 2.
WATCH | Never more important to get a flu shot, Ford says:
As part of its fall preparedness plan to fight the coronavirus, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the province is investing $70 million in a flu shot campaign. 1:34
Ottawa has now had 3,772 people test positive for coronavirus, with more than 800 of those cases coming in September alone. Twenty-six more cases are now considered resolved, leaving 587 active cases, up 64 from Monday.
In Quebec, several private seniors’ residences are grappling with outbreaks, a trend that provincial officials are monitoring closely.
After a relatively stable summer, the number of COVID-19 cases in résidences pour aînés (RPA), or private seniors’ residences, has steadily crept upward from just 37 at the beginning of September to 157 on Sunday.
This comes as Quebec’s top public health official said Monday that a second wave of COVID-19 infections is underway and joined authorities in Montreal and Quebec City in urging people to reduce their social activities as much as possible in the weeks ahead.
The province reported 586 new cases on Monday, the highest daily increase since late May, when the first wave of infections began to taper off.
“With today’s numbers, I’m still very, very, very concerned about the situation, to the point that I consider that we are now at the start of the second wave,” said provincial Public Health Director Dr. Horacio Arruda at a news conference in Quebec City.
Of the 35 RPA residences reporting cases, four — all located in outlying regions of Quebec — are considered critical, with more than a quarter of the residents confirmed positive.
At Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, another patient has died and 14 other patients and six staff members have tested positive for COVID-19.
It is the second death linked to the outbreak at the hospital. A total of 88 staff members are now in isolation, Alberta Health Services (AHS) said Tuesday. But the site remains fully staffed as it uses overtime and reassignments to cover shifts as needed.
Two patients have died after a COVID-19 outbreak at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. A total of 14 patients and six staff members have tested positive. (Alberta Health Services)
AHS continues to investigate how the virus entered the affected units.
Also experiencing an outbreak is Winnipeg’s Parkview Place personal care home where seven residents have tested positive for COVID-19, after one staff member tested positive for the disease last week.
Two residents of the downtown care home tested positive over the weekend, and five residents tested positive on Monday, according to a letter signed by Dr. Rhonda Collins, chief medical officer of Revera Inc., the company that oversees the home.
What’s happening in the rest of Canada
As of 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Canada had 146,417 confirmed or presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 126,246 of those as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 9,274.
COVID-19 test kits are expected to be delivered to some pharmacies in Ontario “either the end of this week or … within the coming days,” said Allan Malek, chief pharmacy officer at the provincial pharmacists’ association.
But, he said, the provincial government has not given an official start date for testing at pharmacies. Only certain pharmacies will participate initially, and the tests will be administered by pharmacists.
Shoppers Drug Mart, Rexall, Walmart Canada and smaller, independent pharmacies are expected to take part.
A student from H.B. Beal Secondary School in London, Ont., has tested positive for COVID-19.
While the Middlesex London Health Unit (MLHU) said it won’t be disclosing any details about the case due to privacy, including if the person is a student or a staff member, CBC News has confirmed the case involves a student.
The province keeps a list of schools where there are active cases of the virus, detailing the number of students and staff infected. As of Monday evening, the provincial database had not been updated to include the London case.
MLHU said members of the school community who have been identified as close contacts to the confirmed case will be notified directly by the health unit and will be directed to get tested.
The University of Ottawa has notified students and faculty that its 2021 winter semester will be composed “primarily of remote learning, with only a few exceptions.”
The University of Ottawa has notified students and faculty that its 2021 winter semester will be composed ‘primarily of remote learning, with only a few exceptions.’ (Raphaël Tremblay/Radio-Canada)
The school has been adapting to teaching remotely, according to Jill Scott, the provost and vice-president of academic affairs, but the university also needs to look ahead as the public health risk COVID-19 poses persists.
“Due to the ongoing pandemic, it is now clear that there will be no large-scale return to campus soon,” wrote Scott in a memo sent to students and staff late Monday afternoon.
“This is not a decision that has been taken lightly. Nonetheless, after extensive research consultations with faculty and staff, and with public health officials, I am confident that this is the responsible choice for uOttawa.”
A teacher in British Columbia has made a workplace safety complaint after contracting COVID-19 from a student.
The teacher at Sentinel Secondary in West Vancouver was contacted on Saturday by the student becaue he was worried about his school work and wanted to continue studying online, according to the president of the teachers’ association.
By Sunday, she was feeling unwell. She tested positive for COVID-19 the same day.
The school confirmed to CBC News on Tuesday that two members of the school community had tested positive and are self-isolating at home.
WATCH | Tough back-to-school choices in neighbourhoods at high risk for COVID-19:
Parents in more marginalized neighbourhoods, which have a higher risk of COVID-19, faced tough choices when it came to sending kids back to school. 6:25
St. John’s International Airport will begin screening all departing passengers this week, an announcement that comes as Newfoundland and Labrador recorded no new cases of COVID-19 on Monday.
The province currently has one active case of the virus. The total caseload is 272, with 268 people recovered and three deaths.
Starting Wednesday, all people flying out of YYT will have their temperature taken, as will non-passengers who are entering the secure area of the airport.
The measures are already in place at the four biggest Canadian airports — Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.
What’s happening around the world
According to Johns Hopkins University, the global total of confirmed coronavirus cases stands at more than 31.4 million. More than 967,000 people have died, while over 21.5 million have recovered.
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 200,000 Tuesday, a figure unimaginable eight months ago when the scourge first reached one of the world’s richest nations, with its sparkling laboratories, top-flight scientists and stockpiles of medicines and emergency supplies.
“It is completely unfathomable that we’ve reached this point,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher.
The bleak milestone, by far the highest confirmed death toll from the virus in the world, was reported by Johns Hopkins, based on figures supplied by state health authorities. But the real toll is thought to be much higher, in part because many COVID-19 deaths were probably ascribed to other causes, especially early on, before widespread testing was in place.
The number of dead in the U.S. is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days. It is roughly equal to the population of Salt Lake City, Utah, or Huntsville, Ala.
WATCH | COVID-19 cases rise in Australian state of Victoria:
Amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases, the premier of Victoria, Australia, is encouraging people to get tested if they have even the mildest of symptoms. 1:06
The premier of Australia’s Victoria state, where infections are on the rise, is encouraging people to get tested even if they have the mildest of symptoms.
“Extra positive cases because of a higher testing rate will not hold us back from taking safe and steady next steps,” Daniel Andrews said Tuesday. “What could hold us back is if we don’t have enough people coming forward and getting tested and we don’t think the test results are an accurate picture of how much virus is out there.”
He said he understands how difficult the circumstances are, but urged people to “show absolute determination … to fight the second wave and to fight it properly.”
The European Union summit has been postponed for a week because European Council President Charles Michel has gone into quarantine after a close collaborator was diagnosed with COVID-19.
Spokesperson Barend Leyts said Tuesday that Michel “today learned that a security officer, with whom he was in close contact early last week, tested positive for COVID.”
The summit set for Thursday and Friday was to address issues as wide-ranging as Brexit negotiations, climate change and the tensions between Greece and Turkey over energy rights.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tightened restrictions as the United Kingdom faces what he called a “turning point” in the pandemic
“A month ago, on average around a thousand people across the U.K. were testing positive for coronavirus everyday,” Johnson said Tuesday. “The latest figure almost quadrupled to 3,929.”
He said the number of cases is growing fastest among people age 29 to 39, though the virus is also spreading to other, more vulnerable age groups.
Johnson asked people who can work from home to do so while pubs, bars and restaurants in England must close at 10 p.m. and operate a table service only.
That means customers will not be allowed to order at the bar.
WATCH | England sets new restrictions to curb COVID-19:
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a dangerous surge in the coronavirus has prompted tighter rules for England, but the restrictions are short of a full lockdown. 1:35
Indonesia on Tuesday reported its biggest daily rise in coronavirus deaths with 160 fatalities, data from the country’s COVID-19 task force showed.
The nation has 9,837 deaths overall, the highest death toll in Asia outside India. It also reported 4,071 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of cases in the Southeast Asian country to 252,923.
Health officials in Israel fear that a three-week lockdown, imposed on Friday to curb a new spike of COVID-19 cases, may not be long or restrictive enough to slow the daily toll and relieve hospitals that they warn could soon reach capacity.
New cases have reached daily highs of more than 5,000 among the nation’s population of nine million, sharply rebounding from single-digit lows following a relatively stricter initial lockdown from March to May.
A man decides to take the stairs as a sign advises riders that only one rider at a time is permitted on an elevator due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, Thursday, July 23, 2020, at Boston University in Boston. (Charles Krupa/The Associated Press)
On the front lines of Israel’s second COVID-19 wave are doctors and nurses working around the clock at Ichilov hospital, where half of 60 COVID-19 patients are in serious condition and require ventilation, according to a hospital spokesperson.
Australia’s virus hot spot of Victoria on Tuesday reported a more than doubling in new COVID-19 infections, likely as a result of increased testing, while states elsewhere in the country said border restrictions would be relaxed as case numbers dwindled.
Officials said the northeastern state of Queensland would open its borders to parts of neighbouring New South Wales (NSW), the country’s most populous state, amid growing confidence that Australia’s second wave of infections has been contained.
NSW has maintained new daily infections in the single digits since Sept. 11, reporting only two cases in the past 24 hours, both of which were overseas travellers already in quarantine.
President Rodrigo Duterte says he has extended a state of calamity in the Philippines by a year to allow the government to draw emergency funds faster in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and harness the police and military to maintain law and order.
Duterte first placed the country under a state of calamity in March when the number of confirmed infections was approaching 200 with about a dozen deaths. The country now has more than 290,000 confirmed cases, the highest in Southeast Asia, with nearly 5,000 deaths.
The tough-talking president lashed out at critics in his televised remarks late Monday for accusing his administration of not doing enough to contain the outbreak.
A man wearing a face mask walks along a street in Tokyo, Japan. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
The number of people testing positive for coronavirus totalled 88 in Tokyo Tuesday, the second straight day that Japan’s capital had fewer than 100 cases.
The Tokyo Metropolitan government said Tuesday the current cumulative number for those infected in the city is 24,394, 30 of them serious cases.
The drop in cases may be partly caused by the four-day weekend including two national holidays that run through Tuesday, which sees many people leave the city for leisure and not being tested.
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.
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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.
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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.
