U.S. President Joe Biden signed his $1.9-trillion US stimulus bill into law on Thursday, commemorating the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic with a measure designed to bring relief to Americans and boost the economy.
The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives gave final congressional approval to the measure on Wednesday, handing the Democratic president a major victory in the early months of his term.
“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country,” Biden said before signing.
U.S. President Joe Biden signs the $1.9-trillion US economic stimulus bill in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Biden will later give a national address urging ‘hope’ on the first anniversary of the start of the coronavirus pandemic. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
Biden signed the measure before a prime-time speech planned for later on Thursday to herald the anniversary of the lockdown, urge vigilance as the pandemic rages and offer hope amid a growing number of vaccinated people across the country.
Biden’s signing of the legislation, called the American Rescue Plan, had initially been scheduled for Friday. Chief of staff Ron Klain said it was moved up after it arrived at the White House on Wednesday night.
“We want to move as fast as possible,” Klain posted on Twitter. A celebration with congressional leaders would still take place on Friday, he said.
The package provides $400 billion US for $1,400 US direct payments to most Americans, $350 billion US in aid to state and local governments, an expansion of the child tax credit and increased funding for COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
“People can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend. This is, of course, just the first wave,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. Payments to eligible Americans will continue throughout the course of the next several weeks.
Nearly 160 million households are expected to get payments, according to White House estimates.
– From Reuters, last updated at 3:45 p.m. ET
What’s happening in Canada
WATCH | Doctors discuss habits we should keep after the pandemic:
Cleaner hands, virtual medicine and Canadians’ resilience are some of the things doctors on the front line would like to see continue once the coronavirus pandemic recedes. 2:07
Canada is marking the one-year anniversary today of the “global pandemic” declaration made by the World Health Organization regarding COVID-19.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other political leaders addressed the House of Commons on Thursday with statements on this national day of observance to commemorate those who’ve died from the novel coronavirus.
“For families and close ones, each death has a before and an after,” Trudeau said.
The government has also asked Canadians to think about the health-care and other essential workers who have been on the front lines treating our illnesses, cooking our food, cleaning our stores, schools and workplaces, and delivering countless items to us.
WATCH | ICU nurse uses COVID-19 vaccine-vial lids to make artwork:
Shawn Toovey describes how he embeds plastic medical waste, including COVID-19 vaccine vial lids, in a piece of artwork 1:49
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, urged caution on Wednesday, saying in a statement that the vast majority of Canadians are still susceptible to COVID-19.
“Although COVID-19 activity had been declining nationally from mid-January through mid-February, daily case counts have since levelled off,” Tam said.
“With the continued increase of cases and outbreaks associated with more contagious variants, we must all remain vigilant with public health measures and individual precautions to prevent a rapid shift in trajectory of the epidemic.”
As of 3:45 p.m. ET on Thursday, Canada had reported 898,829 cases of COVID-19, with 30,595 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 22,363.
In Quebec, health officials reported 738 new cases of COVID-19 and 15 additional deaths on Thursday. Hospitalizations in the province stood at 563, with 111 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units.
Ontario on Thursday reported 1,092 new cases of COVID-19 and 10 additional deaths. COVID-19 hospitalizations stood at 680, with 277 patients in the province’s intensive care units.
Meanwhile, Sudbury, sbout 400 kilometres northwest of Toronto, will move into lockdown on Friday after a large spike in COVID-19 cases. The government said it’s placing the region in the strictest category of Ontario’s pandemic restrictions framework to curb the spread of more contagious COVID-19 variants and protect health system capacity. Sudbury has been in the second-strictest “red” category of the framework and the province is using its “emergency brake” mechanism to impose the lockdown.
WATCH | Ontario facing new surge in COVID cases due to variants, expert says:
Aggressive COVID-19 variants have the upper hand in Ontario, which is why the province needs to vaccinate as quickly as possible, said Dr. Peter Jüni of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. 3:15
In Atlantic Canada, health officials in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island reported no new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday. Health officials in New Brunswick reported two new cases, while Newfoundland and Labrador reported one additional case.
In the North, Nunavut had no new cases to report on Thursday. Health officials in Yukon and the Northwest Territories had not yet provided updated figures for the day.
Manitoba reported 91 new cases and three new deaths on Wednesday. More than half of the new cases — 50 — are in the Northern Health Region, the province said.
In the rest of the Prairies, Saskatchewan reported 165 new cases on Thursday, but no new deaths. Alberta reported 399 new cases of COVID-19 and two additional deaths on Wednesday.
In British Columbia, health officials reported 531 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and one additional death.
Here’s a look at what’s happening across the country:
– From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 3:45 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
A medical staff member prepares to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine at Sunway Medical Center in Subang Jaya, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, on Thursday. (Mohd Rasfan/AFP/Getty Images)
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 118.2 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide with 66.9 million cases listed as recovered on the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracking tool. The global death toll stood at more than 2.6 million.
In Europe, health authorities in Denmark, Norway and Iceland on Thursday suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine shots following reports that blood clots had formed in some people who had been vaccinated and there had been one death in Denmark.
Austria earlier stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and an illness from a pulmonary embolism.
Still, the European medicine regulator EMA said the vaccine’s benefits outweighed its risks and could continue to be administered.
“Both we and the Danish Medicines Agency have to respond to reports of possible serious side-effects, both from Denmark and other European countries,” the director of the Danish Health Authority, Soren Brostrom, said in a statement.
The vaccine would be suspended for 14 days, the health agency said. It did not give details of the Danish blood clot victim.
In France, Germany and Spain, the countries’ respective health ministers all said they plan to continue vaccinating with AstraZeneca. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is in Norway for talks with his counterpart in that country, told a news conference the United Kingdom considers the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine safe.
Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, tweeted Thursday that Canada has “a robust surveillance system in place to detect rare occurrences that may or may not be related to vaccine. It is important to note these are extremely rare events in an area that is using a lot of this vaccine.”
There is currently no indication that vaccination has caused these events and the actions these countries have taken is out of an abundance of caution. We will continue watching closely and monitoring every dose of the vaccine in Alberta. (4/4)
COVIShield, the version of the vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India that’s considered equivalent to AstraZeneca’s by Health Canada, is not linked to the potential side-effect issues under investigation in Europe.
In an email to CBC News, an AstraZeneca spokesperson confirmed that different batches are used in Canada than the ones in Europe.
“It’s yet another example of the system investigating if there’s any hint of a safety issue,” Dr. Michael Gardam, an infectious disease physician and senior medical advisor for Health PEI, said of the process underway in Europe. “This happens every day with every new medication or every new vaccine. It’s just normally the world’s not watching it.”
WATCH | Dr. Isaac Bogoch, infectious disease specialist, talks about Denmark’s decision:
There’s no reason to be overly worried after Denmark said it was temporarily stopping inoculations with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to investigate a small number of blood clots, says infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch. 2:16
That wasn’t the only vaccine news out of Europe on Thursday — European Medicines Agency has recommended that Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine be licensed in the EU.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the J&J shot in late February and Canadian regulators gave the OK for the one-dose shot in early March. Health experts hope that having a one-dose vaccine will speed efforts to immunize the world against the novel coronavirus, especially given the arrival of worrying new variants in recent months.
The EU has struggled to quickly roll out shots and immunize its most vulnerable citizens.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Cambodia reported its first death from the coronavirus on Thursday amid its biggest outbreak so far.
India reported its worst single-day increase in COVID-19 cases since late December on Thursday, as the western state of Maharashtra battled a fresh wave of infections and imposed a lockdown in one of its most densely populated cities.
A total of 22,854 new coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said. It was the highest daily rise since Dec. 25, according to a Reuters tally.
India’s overall caseload of more than 11.2 million — the world’s biggest outside the United States — had been falling steadily since a peak in late September, but increased public gatherings and travel are causing a surge at a time when a majority of Indians have yet to be vaccinated.
The figures are still well below September’s peak of more than 90,000 a day.
WATCH | CBC’s Salimah Shivji reports on the big spike in India’s COVID-19 cases:
The CBC’s Salimah Shivji reports on the big spike in India’s COVID-19 cases and the difficulties of trying to encourage public health policies to curb the virus. 2:04
South Korea will begin vaccinating elders in long-term care settings against the coronavirus this month after authorities approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for adults 65 years old and older.
The decision by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was based on encouraging data from England and Scotland that the vaccine lowered hospitalizations and death rates in the age group.
South Korea delayed approving the AstraZeneca vaccine for people older than 65 when it began its vaccination campaign last month, citing insufficient laboratory data. But health experts accused the government of risking the safety of people who are most vulnerable to COVID-19.
The KCDC says 376,000 workers and residents older than 65 at long-term care hospitals, nursing homes, mental health facilities and rehab centres will begin receiving the shots this month. About 35 per cent of the country’s COVID-19 deaths in 2020 were linked to long-term care facilities.
In the Middle East, Jordan’s foreign minister is calling for more support with coronavirus vaccines as his country tries to ensure its own citizens as well as hundreds of thousands of refugees, primarily from Syria, are inoculated.
Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Germany’s Deutsche Welle that Jordan was far short of the number of vaccines it needed, and was trying to procure doses from China and Russia as well as from Western producers.
Jordan has included its massive refugee population in its virus response and is offering them free vaccines. But he says the onus shouldn’t be on Jordan alone. Safadi said “refugees cannot be the responsibility of host countries only; it is a global challenge and therefore the solution has to be global.”
He says Jordan does “appreciate the tremendous support that we got from our partners in Europe and the U.S. and others,” but that now resources are dwindling for refugees.
In Africa, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging “continental capacity” to produce COVID-19 vaccines as Africa tries to vaccinate more of its 1.3 billion people. Dr. John Nkengasong told reporters Thursday that at least five African countries appear to have the capacity to produce vaccines. He mentioned South Africa, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.
He said a meeting is planned for April 12 between the African Union and outside partners to create a “road map” for boosting African capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines. “It’s so important for us to have that,” he said.
Birgitte Markussen, head of the European Union delegation to the African Union, told the briefing that “efforts will be made to support local production” of vaccines. She said solidarity is important “to make sure no one is left behind” in global efforts to stop the pandemic.
At least 22 of Africa’s 54 countries have received COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX program. The continent has set a target of vaccinating at least 60 per cent of its people.
In the Americas, new COVID-19 cases continue to fall in North America, but in Latin America infections are still rising, particularly in Brazil where a resurgence has caused record daily deaths.
– From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 2 p.m. ET
VANCOUVER – A disciplinary investigation has found a former Vancouver police sergeant shared “disrespectful” commentary on a fellow officer’s court testimony about being sexually assaulted by a colleague.
The decision against Narinder Dosanjh, obtained by The Canadian Press, includes the running commentary on the woman’s testimony — apparently written by someone inside the courtroom — that calls her a “bad drunk” and says there was “no way” her case would be proved.
Former New Westminster police chief Dave Jansen, the external officer who rendered the decision against Dosanjh, says his assessment accounts for a culture of treating officers who testify against each other as “rats.”
Former Vancouver constable Jagraj Roger Berar was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to a year in jail for assaulting the woman, who can’t be identified because of a publication ban on her name.
Jansen says in his ruling, dated Oct. 11, that the comments in a Vancouver police group chat appear “supportive” of Berar and reflect “all-too-common myths” about women who make sexual assault allegations.
While Jansen found Dosanjh committed discreditable conduct by sharing the chats, a complaint against a more-senior Vancouver officer who was inside the courtroom, and who the victim and other officers believed wrote the commentary, were not substantiated.
The ruling says Jansen, who retired as New Westminster’s chief constable, would accept submissions before deciding how Dosanjh should be punished.
The woman who was assaulted was the complainant in the disciplinary investigation, and said in an interview she felt “vindicated” by Jansen’s decision because it “truly paints what I’ve been through,” after reporting a fellow officer for sexual assault.
She said many other women in municipal policing fear speaking out about ill-treatment at work, and some have told her about being assaulted and harassed but feared ruining their careers if they complained.
“This decision is important for those women to see,” she said. “It shows the tides are changing. Like, this is the first win I’ve had.”
A spokesman for the Surrey Police Service, where Dosanjh now works, did not immediately answer a question about how he was penalized, and said Dosanjh declined an interview request with The Canadian Press.
In his decision, Jansen said there was an “unfortunate but often pervasive” culture of treating officers who complain as “‘rats’, who betrayed their colleagues.”
“In terms of the messages themselves, Sergeant Dosanjh alleges that they are not degrading, humiliating or derogatory and do not attack the personal character of the complainant. I disagree,” Jansen wrote.
The decision includes a screenshot of the commentary about the complainant, who said the order of the messages appeared to refer to her evidence while she was being cross-examined and suggested the comments were written by someone listening to her testimony.
The commentary on a Vancouver police chat group on the Signal messaging app said the victim “wore a wire twice,” and “admitted in cross to possibly drinking way more alcohol than she originally claimed.”
“Her memory is super hazy and there’s no way you can prove beyond reasonable doubt,” the person wrote.
“And she admitted that she is really bad drunk,” they added.
Another message said it was a “nail in the coffin” of the case that video showed the complainant “cuddling, holding hands” with Berar.
The victim, who became aware of the commentary when a friend in the department showed them to her, was distressed by the messages and disputed their accuracy, said Jansen.
“The comments also appear to reflect some of the all-too-common myths around women making allegations of sexual assault. Some of these myths include the belief that because a victim socialized with the perpetrator, or engaged in some consensual activity with him, therefore she must have consented to the assault,” he wrote.
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh shared the messages with a fellow officer after getting them from a “VPD chat group that he claims he knew little about, from a co-worker he claims not to be able to identify.”
The decision said other officers believed the commentary was written bya more-senior officer in the department who had been present at the trial, but Jansen said the discreditable conduct complaint against that person was unsubstantiated.
The decision said Dosanjh claimed he was the “fall guy” and “a pawn in a broader game.”
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh was a senior officer and supervisor who was aware of the “vulnerability of victims of sexual crimes and of the myths that surround sexual assault victims.”
It said Dosanjh’s “distribution of these messages that were disrespectful of an alleged victim of sexual violence who was also a co-worker, should they become public, would likely discredit the reputation of the police force.”
The Vancouver Police Department did not immediately provide comment on Jansen’s decision.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
FREDERICTON – The offspring of beetles imported from British Columbia are ready to take up the fight against an invasive insect that is killing hemlock trees in Nova Scotia.
Last fall and spring, about 5,000 Laricobius nigrinus beetles — affectionately called Lari by scientists — made an overnight journey from the West Coast.
Lucas Roscoe, research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, says in the fight against the woolly adelgid that is destroying swaths of hemlock trees in Nova Scotia, the first step was to make sure the Lari beetle can survive a Nova Scotia winter.
The one-to-two-millimetre black flying beetles were released across six sites in Nova Scotia that had the woolly adelgids.
In one of the sites, scientists placed cages of imported beetles and about 60 per cent of them were able to survive the winter in Nova Scotia, which Roscoe says is an encouraging rate.
He says the woolly adelgid was first seen in southwestern Nova Scotia in 2017 and the peppercorn-sized insect, aided by climate change, has since spread north.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
Dozens of researchers across Canada, including renowned environmentalist David Suzuki, have joined a growing chorus of voices urging the federal government to halt the importation of an endangered monkey species for medical research in Quebec.
A letter signed by 80 scientists, academics, doctors and students says testing on long-tailed macaques from Cambodia should be banned due to ethical concerns and potential public-health risks.
“A decade ago, chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, ceased to be used for experimentation because using such animal ‘models’ could no longer be justified from scientific, ethical, and/or financial perspectives,” says the letter addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his environment minister and the premier of Quebec.
The researchers say they are also concerned about “the serious risks of transmission of zoonotic pathogens” that could be associated with transporting macaques.
Their letter urges the federal government to end charter flights that have been bringing the macaques into Canada, and to adopt regulations banning the importation of all primates for biomedical testing.
It’s the latest group to add more pressure on Ottawa to suspend the monkey imports by Charles River Laboratories, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant that has a sprawling facility in Montreal.
The company announced in 2023 that it was halting macaque imports into the U.S., after it was subpoenaed in a case that involved the indictment of two senior Cambodian officials over what authorities described as “multiple felonies for their role in bringing wild long-tailed macaques into the United States.”
No charges have been brought against Charles River Laboratories, or any of its officials, and the company has said it will fully co-operate with the U.S. investigation.
At around the same time, imports of monkeys from Cambodia into Canada dramatically surged, with Statistics Canada data showing a 500 per cent increase in 2023 from the year before.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, the federal department responsible for monitoring commercial trade in wildlife, confirmed to the Canadian Press that Charles River Laboratories has imported 6,769 long-tailed macaques into the country between January 2023 and August of this year. The monetary value of these imported macaques is around $120 million dollars, according to Statistics Canada.
The department previously said that officials rigorously and closely inspect imports of foreign animals, including those brought in by Charles River Laboratories, and that all macaque imports so far this year have complied with federal and international wildlife regulations.
The government and the company have both said that no Canadian laws have been broken.
Last month, the Canadian Transportation Authority issued a permit for another shipment on a cargo plane chartered by Charles River Laboratories. A flight tracker shows that a plane with the same flight number as what is shown on the permit departed Phnom Penh, Cambodia last Thursday, and arrived in Montreal on Friday.
Jesse Greener, a professor of chemistry at Laval University who signed the researchers’ letter to the government, said medical technology has developed to a point that makes it unjustifiable for the pharmaceutical industry to continue using live primates for testing.
“The government should take a leadership role and help researchers and surely the private sector to pivot from using these unethical, and I would say old and outdated and unreliable animal models, and embrace these much more efficient and ethical approaches that are … exploding right now,” said Greener, who has done research on methods to replace animals in such experiments.
“It is grotesque,” he said of the animal use. “It is time that we change the page on this chapter of terrible research and commercial activities.”
Canada banned the use of animals for cosmetic testing last year, but it is still legal to use live primates for drug testing purposes.
The federal government said a draft strategy aimed at reducing and replacing the use of animals in drug testing was published in September and open to public consultations for 60 days.
The strategy, which will be revised based on input from researchers, experts and others, is expected to be published in June 2025, it said.
“The government of Canada is committed to advancing efforts to replace, reduce, or refine the use of vertebrate animals in toxicity testing where possible,” Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a statement Tuesday.
Charles River Laboratories previously told The Canadian Press that while it is also committed to reducing its use of live primates, global regulatory bodies require drugs to be tested on animals before they are evaluated in humans.
The company said the use of non-human primates has been vital in developing treatments for various diseases and that the standards it applies in its facilities are exceeding global norms.
Matthew Green, a New Democrat MP who had previously called on the federal government to halt the latest shipment of macaques, said he has “great concern” about importing this exotic animal.
“Generally in Canada, Canadians like to believe that our government has higher regulations and more stringent enforcement protocols when it comes to protecting endangered species, yet this is not the case in comparison to what the United States has done,” he said.
Green and two of his NDP colleagues wrote a letter to three federal ministers last month, demanding an “immediate attention” to the issue.
The Animal Alliance of Canada also sent a letter to the environment minister in August, urging the immediate suspension of monkey importation from Cambodia.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
