Biden administration will begin providing COVID-19 vaccines to U.S. pharmacies, part of its plan to ramp up vaccinations.
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Britain begins a door-to-door COVID-19 testing of 80,000 people on Tuesday in a bid to stem the spread of a variant of the novel coronavirus first identified in South Africa.
Public Health England said it had identified a total of 105 cases of the variant since Dec. 22, and to contain new outbreaks, residents in eight areas of the country will now be tested whether or not they are showing symptoms, a process known as “surge testing.”
There are about 10,000 people in each area, three of which are in London, two of which are in the southeast, one of which is in central England, one of which is in the east and another of which is in the northwest.
Those in the affected areas will be tested, even if they are asymptomatic, to break any chain of transmission in the community.
“It is concerning — it’s deeply concerning,” junior education minister Michelle Donelan told Sky. “It’s still a very perilous stage of this virus and we’ve got these new variants spreading.”
The number of new coronavirus cases in Britain is levelling out or falling after a surge in infections at the end of last year, fuelled by a more transmissible variant found in the southeast of England.
Britain is rolling out a mass vaccination program, with nearly 9.3 million people having received the first shot, and the government and health officials are concerned new variants would undermine its efforts to bring the pandemic under control.
However, there has been criticism that ministers have been too slow to bring in measures to quarantine travellers arriving from overseas who might bring new strains of the virus with them.
People get tested in Walsall, England, as local authorities prepare to deploy more testing in a bid to track down a COVID-19 variant found in the area. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Scientists have said the variant first detected in South Africa appears to be more transmissible, but there is no evidence that it causes more severe disease. However, several laboratory studies have found that it reduces vaccine and antibody therapy efficacy.
The United Kingdom has seen more than 3.8 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 106,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University.
On Tuesday, the world learned that Capt. Tom Moore, the British Second World War veteran who raised millions of pounds for health service workers on the frontline of the battle against COVID-19, had died at age 100.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our dear father, Captain Sir Tom Moore,” his daughters said in a statement.
-From Reuters, last updated at 11:15 a.m. ET
What’s happening in Canada
WATCH | Some say travel restrictions are not enough to prevent COVID-19 spread
New federal travel restrictions take effect this week, including mandatory quarantine in a hotel and a temporary suspension on Canadian airline flights to Mexico and the Caribbean, but some experts already say the plan has too many holes to be truly effective. 2:48
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government has inked a deal that will see COVID-19 vaccines churned out on home soil. Trudeau said the federal government has signed a memorandum of understanding with Novavax to start producing immunization doses at the Royalmount facility in Montreal.
The Novavax vaccine is currently under review by Health Canada. If approved, it would eventually leave Canada less reliant on foreign production for the most sought-after product in the world.
Trudeau also says the government is investing $25 million in Vancouver-based biotechnology company Precision NanoSystems to build a manufacturing centre, with the ultimate goal of producing up to 240 million vaccine doses per year.
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said at a briefing Tuesday that national daily case counts have been declining over the past two to three weeks, but cautioned that communities need to remain vigilant and follow public health measures aimed at slowing transmission.
“We must hold fast to these measures to prevent re-acceleration of the epidemic and limit the spread of more infectious virus variants,” Tam said.
WATCH | Variants could change Canada’s COVID-19 situation ‘rapidly,’ experts say
Even as overall COVID-19 numbers continue to trend downward across Canada, health officials are increasingly concerned about the spread of two variants: one first detected in the U.K. and another in South Africa, which experts say could ‘rapidly’ change the situation in Canada. 2:05
To date, provinces have reported over 135 cases of the B117 variant first reported in the U.K., and at least 13 cases of the B1351 variant first reported in South Africa, Tam said.
“We’re in a very delicate period right now, where vaccines are just beginning to roll out,” she said. “So I think the message is really, ‘Hang on in there for a bit longer,’ so that the vaccine programs can accelerate.”
Relaxation of restrictions needs to happen “very cautiously,” and take into account the public health system’s capacity and the local health-care system’s capacity, she said.
As of 2:30 p.m ET on Tuesday, Canada had reported 785,497 cases of COVID-19 — with 49,679 considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 20,186.
Ontario saw a substantial drop in its reported COVID-19 numbers on Tuesday, but officials said a data migration by Toronto Public health had an impact on the numbers. Health Minister Christine Elliott reported just 745 cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday. Hospitalizations stood at 1,192, with 341 people in intensive care units.
“Please note that Toronto Public Health has now migrated all of their data to the provincial data system, CCM,” Elliott said in a tweet. “This migration has impacted today’s daily counts, resulting in an underestimation of cases. We anticipate fluctuations in case numbers over the next few days.”
The province on Monday recorded its first case of the COVID-19 variant first identified in South Africa, saying a case was detected in Peel Region.
Ontario’s top doctor said the person neither travelled nor had any known contact with anyone who travelled.
Data from South Africa shows the variant may be more infectious, Dr. David Williams said.
Ontario, which reported 1,969 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, had reported a total of 69 total cases of the variant first reported in the U.K. as of Sunday.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has reported its first cases of the coronavirus variant initially detected in the U.K. Two cases were detected in the Saint John region, and one in the Miramichi region. Two of the cases are related to international travel and one is related to travel in Canada.
“The arrival of the variant will put more pressure on our health system,” Dr. Jennifer Russell, chief medical officer of health, said. “It is a very fast-moving strain and it will be difficult to get ahead of it.”
The province reported 25 new cases on Tuesday, the majority of them in the Edmundston region.
In other provincial updates, Nova Scotia reported one new case on Tuesday. In the North, the Northwest Territories reported two new cases and Nunuvat reported none. Manitoba reported 83 new cases, with the majority in the Northern health region.
Quebec Premier François Legault is expected to announce some changes to COVID-19 restrictions later Tuesday.
The province reported 1,053 new cases of COVID-19 and 38 deaths on Tuesday. Hospitalizations stood at 1,110, according to a provincial dashboard, with 178 people in intensive care units.
Tuesday’s update comes a day after health officials in Quebec reported 890 new cases — the first time since early November that Quebec has reported fewer than 1,000 daily new cases.
Here’s a look at what’s happening across the country:
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 2:30 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
As of early Tuesday morning, more than 103.4 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide with more than 57.4 million of those cases considered recovered or resolved, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracking tool. The global death toll stood at more than 2.2 million.
In Europe, Estonia said it will allow passengers arriving to the country with a proof of COVID-19 vaccination to omit the quarantine requirement. Health officials of the Baltic country said that proof isn’t restricted only to those vaccine suppliers approved in the European Union but proof from any of the global vaccine suppliers would be accepted. However, Estonia’s health board said that certificate of vaccination from foreign nationals has to meet certain criteria, including language.
Vaccination certificates must be in either in Estonian, Russian — which is widely spoken in Estonia — or English. Hanna Sepp, head of the Health Board’s infectious diseases unit, told the Estonian public broadcaster ERR that the certificate has to indicate the disease against which the person has been vaccinated, when the vaccine was formulated and which manufacturer’s vaccine was used. It also has to include data on the issuer of the vaccine and the vaccine batch number.
Children in classes up to fourth grade will return to school Feb. 8 in Denmark after the country saw a steady reduction in new COVID-19 infections in recent weeks. Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said it was “a careful reopening,” noting the Scandinavian country is still dealing with the virus variant first reported in Britain that has been spreading in Denmark despite overall declining numbers of new infections.
Staff at schools will undergo regular testing and parents will be required to wear face masks on school sites. Denmark has recorded 2,145 deaths and 198,960 cases.
In the Middle East, Dubai will start vaccinating people with the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, the state media office said on Tuesday as the United Arab Emirates battles its biggest outbreak since the pandemic began.
The first shipment has arrived from India, the state media office said in a tweet. It did not provide details on how many doses were received or when inoculations would start.
In Africa, Zimbabwe will have access to a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine soon, China’s ambassador in Harare said, as Beijing ramps up its availability to developing nations.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Malaysia’s government extended a lockdown and broad movement restrictions by two weeks as a surge in infections has pushed the cumulative total past 200,000 cases.
Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced Tuesday that he is extending a coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo and nine other areas through March 7, amid growing uncertainty over the national rollout of vaccines and the hosting of the Tokyo Olympics this summer.
People walk along Nakamise Shopping Street near Sensoji Temple, normally a hugely popular destination for foreign tourists, on Tuesday in Tokyo. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
Under the state of emergency, the government has issued non-binding requests for people to avoid crowds and eating out in groups, and for restaurants and bars to close by 8 p.m.
New cases have declined in Tokyo and nationwide since early January, but experts say hospitals remain flooded with serious cases and that preventive measures should remain in place.
Japan has had about 400,000 coronavirus cases, including 5,800 deaths.
“I seek your co-operation to endure just a bit longer,” Suga said. “We must make sure the infections are on a continuous decline.”
The emergency will end Sunday as planned in one prefecture, Tochigi, which is north of Tokyo, where the situation has improved. It will remain in place in Tokyo and its neighbours Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa, as well as in Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka in the west, and Aichi and Gifu in central Japan.
The World Health Organization experts have visited an animal disease centre in the Chinese city of Wuhan as part of their investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. A team member said they met with staff in charge of the health of livestock in Hubei province, toured laboratories and had an “in-depth” discussion with questions and answers.
Meanwhile, WHO officials in Geneva were pushing back against suggestions the team was not getting enough access or data. The officials said the agency was continuing to ask for more data. They also said the team planned to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology, considered among the major sources of information about the origins of the coronavirus.
China reported the fewest new COVID-19 cases in a month as imported cases overtook local infections, official data showed on Tuesday, suggesting its worst wave since March 2020 is being stamped out ahead of an important holiday.
In the Americas, the Biden administration will begin providing COVID-19 vaccines to U.S. pharmacies, part of its plan to ramp up vaccinations as new and potentially more serious virus strains are starting to appear.
A White House announcement was expected Tuesday, a person familiar with the plan told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement.
Initially the government will be shipping limited quantities of vaccine to drugstores around the country, but that’s expected to accelerate as drugmakers increase production. Drugstores have become a mainstay for flu shots and shingles vaccines, and the industry is capable of vaccinating tens of millions of people monthly.
The partnership with drug stores was originally announced by the Trump administration last November. At that time, no coronavirus vaccines had been approved.
The U.S. government also promised undocumented migrants the same access to COVID-19 vaccines as other civilians and said inoculation centres would be immigration enforcement-free zones.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 12:20 p.m. ET
Have questions about this story? We’re answering as many as we can in the comments.
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.
