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.
MONTREAL – Quebec’s ombudsperson is warning that public services are becoming “dehumanized” in the province amid a rise in demand for them.
Marc-André Dowd released his annual report today, which highlights several examples of people receiving inadequate care across the health network in the 12 months leading to March 31.
One dying man who lived alone was denied help cleaning his cat’s litter box by his local health clinic, a service Dowd says should have been given for “humanitarian reasons.”
Dowd also describes staff at a long-term care home feeding residents “mechanically” and talking among each other — despite health ministry guidelines directing staff to maintain eye contact with residents.
The ombudsperson says his office received a record number of problems to investigate across the province’s public services — 24,867 compared with 22,053 last year.
He says his office investigated 13,358 cases between April 2023 and March of this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
OTTAWA – French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Canada next week after a planned trip in July was cancelled amid political turmoil in France.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in a statement today that Macron will be in Canada Wednesday and Thursday after the leaders attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
Trudeau will welcome Macron in Ottawa on Wednesday, where they are expected to discuss collaboration on geopolitical issues including their ongoing support for Ukraine.
They are also expected to discuss ways to strengthen the response to emerging threats, such as disinformation.
In Montreal, Trudeau intends to show off the city’s artificial intelligence sector, while both countries reaffirm their commitment to work with counterparts on responsible use of AI.
The leaders will also discuss promoting the French language ahead of the Francophonie summit being held in France next month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Health Canada has authorized Novavax’s updated COVID-19 vaccine that protects against currently circulating variants of the virus.
The protein-based vaccine, called Nuvaxovid, has been reformulated to target the JN.1 subvariant of Omicron.
It will replace the previous version of the vaccine, which targeted the XBB.1.5 subvariant of Omicron.
Health Canada recently asked provinces and territories to get rid of their older COVID-19 vaccines to ensure the most current vaccine will be used during this fall’s respiratory virus season.
Earlier this week, Health Canada approved Moderna’s updated mRNA COVID vaccine.
It is still reviewing Pfizer’s updated mRNA vaccine, with a decision expected soon.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version erroneously described the Novavax vaccine as an mRNA shot.
