The European Union on Tuesday warned pharmaceutical giants that develop coronavirus vaccines to honour their contractual obligations after slow deliveries of shots from two companies hampered the bloc’s vaunted vaccine rollout in several nations.
The bloc already lashed out Monday at pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, accusing it of failing to guarantee the delivery of coronavirus vaccines without a valid explanation. It also had expressed displeasure over vaccine delivery delays from Pfizer-BioNTech last week.
“Europe invested billions to help develop the world’s first COVID-19 vaccines. To create a truly global common good,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the World Economic Forum’s virtual event in Switzerland. “And now, the companies must deliver. They must honour their obligations.”
The statement Tuesday highlighted the level of distrust that has grown between the 27-nation bloc and pharmaceutical companies over the past week.
On Monday, the EU threatened to impose strict export controls on all coronavirus vaccines produced in the bloc to make sure that companies honour their commitments to the EU.
A doctor adjusts his personal protective gear before entering a patient’s room at a COVID-19 intensive care unit at Klinikum Rechts der Isar hospital in Munich, southern Germany on Monday. (Lennart Preiss/AFP/Getty Images)
The EU said it provided €2.7 billion (more than $4.1 billion Cdn) to speed up vaccine research and production capacity and was determined to get some value for that money with hundreds of millions of vaccine shots according to a schedule the companies had committed to.
“Europe is determined to contribute to this global common good, but it also means business,” von der Leyen said Tuesday via video link.
Germany was firmly behind von der Leyen’s view.
“With a complex process such as vaccine production, I can understand if there are production problems — but then it must affect everyone fairly and equally,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn told ZDF television. “This is not about EU first, it’s about Europe’s fair share.”
The EU, which has 450 million citizens and the economic and political clout of the world’s biggest trading bloc, is lagging badly behind countries like Israel and Britain in rolling out coronavirus vaccine shots for its health-care workers and most vulnerable people. That’s despite having over 400,000 confirmed virus deaths since the pandemic began.
The EU has committed to buying 300 million AstraZeneca doses with an option on 100 million extra shots. Late last week, the company said it was planning to reduce a first contingent of 80 million to 31 million.
The shortfall of planned deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is expected to get medical approval by the bloc on Friday, combined with hiccups in the distribution of Pfizer-BioNTech shots is putting EU nations under heavy pressure. Pfizer says it was delaying deliveries to Europe and Canada while it upgrades its plant in Belgium to increase production capacity.
The European Medicines Agency is scheduled to review the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine Friday and its approval is hotly anticipated. The AstraZeneca vaccine is already being used in Britain and has been approved for emergency use by half a dozen countries, including India, Pakistan, Argentina and Mexico.
The delays in getting vaccines will make it harder to meet early targets in the EU’s goal of vaccinating 70 per cent of its adults by late summer.
The EU has signed six vaccine contracts for more than two billion doses, but only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been approved for use so far.
-From The Associated Press, last updated at 7:15 a.m. ET
What’s happening in Canada
WATCH | Inside two Toronto ICUs one year since Canada’s first COVID-19 case:
A look inside two Toronto hospital ICUs one year after Canada’s first case of COVID-19, and at the doctors and nurses both exhausted and determined to keep fighting. 4:28
As Parliament resumed Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced a barrage of questions from MPs of all parties as they blasted the Liberal government for what they described as a botched approach to rolling out vaccines.
Both Trudeau and Procurement Minister Anita Anand repeated the government’s promise that by the end of September, all Canadians wishing to be vaccinated will have received their shots.
Trudeau has stressed that the delay that is currently hampering vaccination efforts is only temporary and that Canada is expected to receive four million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of March. The prime minister noted that the country is still receiving shipments of the Moderna vaccine.
Earlier Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said there is “tremendous pressure” on the global supply chain for vaccines that the government has tried to mitigate.
“We are working on this every single day, because we know how important vaccines are to Canadians, to first and foremost the lives of Canadians and also to our economy,” she told a news conference in Ottawa by video.
WATCH | New urgency for vaccinations in long-term care homes:
Faced with a COVID-19 vaccine shortage, Ontario says it will now vaccinate only long-term care residents and other seniors in at-risk retirement homes and care settings. 2:54
Despite the vaccine delay, some provinces continued to report encouraging drops in the number of new cases and hospitalizations. Ontario reported fewer than 2,000 cases on Monday, as well as fewer people in hospital. It was a similar story in Quebec, where hospitalizations dropped for a sixth straight day.
As of early Tuesday morning, Canada had reported 753,011 cases of COVID-19, with 62,444 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 19,238.
In Alberta, health officials reported the province’s first case of a COVID-19 variant first seen in the United Kingdom that can’t be directly traced to international travel. Health Minister Tyler Shandro said that while it is one case, the variant has the potential to spread faster than the original novel coronavirus and could quickly overwhelm hospitals if not checked.
“There’s no question that this kind of exponential growth would push our health-care system to the brink,” Shandro told a virtual news conference Monday.
Here’s a look at what’s happening across Canada:
–From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 6:45 a.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
As of early Tuesday morning, more than 99.7 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 55.1 million of the cases considered recovered or resolved, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 2.1 million.
In Europe, the U.K. is set to announce changes to its quarantine rules later Tuesday that could see anyone arriving in the country having to spend ten days in a hotel at their own expense. Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said there will be an “announcement on this issue later on today,” but would not be drawn on what the changes would entail.
The British government has been reviewing its quarantine policies amid concerns over new variants of the coronavirus. Whether the changes will be universal and apply to everyone arriving, including British citizens, or just to those arriving from high-risk coronavirus countries, is unclear. Zahawi told Sky News that “as we vaccinate more of the adult population, if there are new variants like the South African or the Brazilian variants, we need to be very careful.”
Pedestrians walk past a sign pointing toward a COVID-19 testing centre in Walthamstow over the weekend in London. (Hollie Adams/Getty Images)
The U.K. has seen more than 3.6 million reported cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 98,700 deaths.
Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, said Monday that Canada is considering additional international travel restrictions. Speaking on CBC’s Power & Politics, Freeland said she is, “very sympathetic to the view that, with the virus raging around the world, we need to be sure our borders are really, really secure.”
In Portugal, the health minister said authorities are considering asking other European Union countries for help amid a steep surge in COVID-19 cases. Portugal has had the world’s worst rate of new daily cases and deaths per 100,000 people for the past week, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Health Minister Marta Temido said sending patients to other EU countries is not uncommon in the bloc. But, she said, Portugal has the disadvantage of being geographically remote and hospitals across the continent are under pressure from the pandemic. She said the country may instead be asking for medical workers to be sent.
Portuguese hospitals are under severe strain, Temido told public broadcaster RTP. “We have beds available,” she said. “What we’re struggling with is finding staff.”
That request may be difficult to fulfil, because all countries in the 27-nation bloc are dealing with their own pandemic strains, made more difficult now because of the emergence of virus variants.
In the Asia-Pacific region, health authorities in Taiwan are quarantining 5,000 people while looking for the source of two new coronavirus cases linked to a hospital.
Indonesia’s confirmed coronavirus infections since the pandemic began crossed one million on Tuesday and hospitals in some hard-hit areas were near capacity.
Indonesia’s Health Ministry announced that new daily infections rose by 13,094 on Tuesday to bring the country’s total to 1,012,350, the most in Southeast Asia. The total number of deaths reached 28,468.
The milestone comes just weeks after Indonesia launched a massive campaign to inoculate two-thirds of the country’s 270 million people, with President Joko Widodo receiving the first shot of a Chinese-made vaccine. Health-care workers, military, police, teachers and other at-risk populations are being prioritized for the vaccine in the world’s fourth-most populous country.
Medical workers visit COVID-19 patients at a general hospital in Indonesia on Monday. (Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images)
Chinese airlines are offering refunded tickets as the coronavirus continues to spread in the country’s northeast. The offer Tuesday from the government’s aviation authority comes amid a push to prevent people travelling during the Lunar New Year holiday next month.
In the Americas, Mexico’s death toll passed 150,000 on Monday following a surge in infections in recent weeks.
In Africa, Russia and China have approached Zimbabwe about supplying vaccines to tackle its escalating COVID-19 outbreak amid concern about Harare’s ability to afford the shots.
In the Middle East, Oman said earlier this week it will extend the closure of its land borders for another week until Feb. 1.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 7:10 a.m. ET
Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service’s crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.
The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year. Even so, the company’s revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.
Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers — far more than any other streaming service.
The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company’s revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.
The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix’s stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company’s shares so far this year.
The past quarter’s subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch its popular service without paying for it.
The crackdown, triggered by a rare loss of subscribers coming out of the pandemic in 2022, helped Netflix add 57 million subscribers from June 2022 through this June — an average of more than 7 million per quarter, while many of its industry rivals have been struggling as households curbed their discretionary spending.
Netflix’s gains also were propelled by a low-priced version of its service that included commercials for the first time in its history. The company still is only getting a small fraction of its revenue from the 2-year-old advertising push, but Netflix is intensifying its focus on that segment of its business to help boost its profits.
In a letter to shareholder, Netflix reiterated previous cautionary notes about its expansion into advertising, though the low-priced option including commercials has become its fastest growing segment.
“We have much more work to do improving our offering for advertisers, which will be a priority over the next few years,” Netflix management wrote in the letter.
As part of its evolution, Netflix has been increasingly supplementing its lineup of scripted TV series and movies with live programming, such as a Labor Day spectacle featuring renowned glutton Joey Chestnut setting a world record for gorging on hot dogs in a showdown with his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi.
Netflix will be trying to attract more viewer during the current quarter with a Nov. 15 fight pitting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against Jake Paul, a YouTube sensation turned boxer, and two National Football League games on Christmas Day.
REGINA – Saskatchewan’s provincial election is on Oct. 28. Here’s a look at some of the campaign promises made by the two major parties:
Saskatchewan Party
— Continue withholding federal carbon levy payments to Ottawa on natural gas until the end of 2025.
— Reduce personal income tax rates over four years; a family of four would save $3,400.
— Double the Active Families Benefit to $300 per child per year and the benefit for children with disabilities to $400 a year.
— Direct all school divisions to ban “biological boys” from girls’ change rooms in schools.
— Increase the First-Time Homebuyers Tax Credit to $15,000 from $10,000.
— Reintroduce the Home Renovation Tax Credit, allowing homeowners to claim up to $4,000 in renovation costs on their income taxes; seniors could claim up to $5,000.
— Extend coverage for insulin pumps and diabetes supplies to seniors and young adults
— Provide a 50 per cent refundable tax credit — up to $10,000 — to help cover the cost of a first fertility treatment.
— Hire 100 new municipal officers and 70 more officers with the Saskatchewan Marshals Service.
— Amend legislation to provide police with more authority to address intoxication, vandalism and disturbances on public property.
— Platform cost of $1.2 billion, with deficits in the first three years and a small surplus in 2027.
—
NDP
— Pause the 15-cent-a-litre gas tax for six months, saving an average family about $350.
— Remove the provincial sales tax from children’s clothes and ready-to-eat grocery items like rotisserie chickens and granola bars.
— Pass legislation to limit how often and how much landlords can raise rent.
— Repeal the law that requires parental consent when children under 16 want to change their names or pronouns at school.
— Launch a provincewide school nutrition program.
— Build more schools and reduce classroom sizes.
— Hire 800 front-line health-care workers in areas most in need.
— Launch an accountability commission to investigate cost overruns for government projects.
— Scrap the marshals service.
— Hire 100 Mounties and expand detox services.
— Platform cost of $3.5 billion, with small deficits in the first three years and a small surplus in the fourth year.
—
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct .17, 2024.
VANCOUVER – More than a million British Columbians have already cast their provincial election ballots, smashing the advance voting record ahead of what weather forecasters say will be a rain-drenched election day in much of B.C., with snow also predicted for the north.
Elections BC said Thursday that 1,001,331 people had cast ballots in six days of advance voting, easily breaking a record set during the pandemic election four years ago.
More than 28 per cent of all registered electors have voted, potentially putting the province on track for a big final turnout on Saturday.
“It reflects what I believe, which is this election is critically important for the future of our province,” New Democrat Leader David Eby said Thursday at a news conference in Vancouver. “I understand why British Columbians are out in numbers. We haven’t seen questions like this on the ballot in a generation.”
He said voters are faced with the choice of supporting his party’s plans to improve affordability, public health care and education, while the B.C. Conservatives, led by John Rustad, are proposing to cut services and are fielding candidates who support conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and espouse racist views.
Rustad held no public availabilities on Thursday.
Elections BC said the record advance vote tally includes about 223,000 people who voted on the final day of advance voting Wednesday, the last day of advance polls, shattering the one-day record set on Tuesday by more than 40,000 votes.
The previous record for advance voting in a B.C. election was set in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when about 670,000 people voted early, representing about 19 per cent of registered voters.
Some ridings have now seen turnout of more than 35 per cent, including in NDP Leader David Eby’s Vancouver-Point Grey riding where 36.5 per cent of all electors have voted.
There has also been big turnout in some Vancouver Island ridings, including Oak Bay-Gordon Head, where 39 per cent of electors have voted, and Victoria-Beacon Hill, where Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is running, with 37.2 per cent.
Advance voter turnout in Rustad’s riding of Nechako Lakes was 30.5 per cent.
Total turnout in 2020 was 54 per cent, down from about 61 per cent in 2017.
Stewart Prest, a political science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, said many factors are at play in the advance voter turnout.
“If you have an early option, if you have an option where there are fewer crowds, fewer lineups that you have to deal with, then that’s going to be a much more desirable option,” said Prest.
“So, having the possibility of voting across multiple advanced voting days is something that more people are looking to as a way to avoid last-minute lineups or heavy weather.”
Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.
Environment Canada said the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.
Eby said the forecast of an atmospheric weather storm on election day will become a “ballot question” for some voters who are concerned about the approaches the parties have towards addressing climate change.
But he said he is confident people will not let the storm deter them from voting.
“I know British Columbians are tough and they’re not going to let even an atmospheric river stop them from voting,” said Eby.
In northern B.C., heavy snow is in the forecast starting Friday and through to Saturday for areas along the Yukon boundary.
Elections BC said it will focus on ensuring it is prepared for bad weather, said Andrew Watson, senior director of communications.
“We’ve also been working with BC Hydro to make sure that they’re aware of all of our voting place locations so that they can respond quickly if there are any power outages,” he said.
Elections BC also has paper backups for all of its systems in case there is a power outage, forcing them to go through manual procedures, Watson said.
Prest said the dramatic downfall of the Official Opposition BC United Party just before the start of the campaign and voter frustration could also be contributing to the record size of the advance vote.
It’s too early to say if the province is experiencing a “renewed enthusiasm for voting,” he said.
“As a political scientist, I think it would be a good thing to see, but I’m not ready to conclude that’s what we are seeing just yet,” he said, adding, “this is one of the storylines to watch come Saturday.”
Overall turnout in B.C. elections has generally been dwindling compared with the 71.5 per cent turnout for the 1996 vote.
Adam Olsen, Green Party campaign chair, said the advance voting turnout indicates people are much more engaged in the campaign than they were in the weeks leading up to the start of the campaign in September.
“All we know so far is that people are excited to go out and vote early,” he said. “The real question will be does that voter turnout stay up throughout election night?”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said more than 180,000 voters cast their votes on Wednesday.
