Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged citizens on Tuesday to continue to respect a nighttime curfew intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus despite a court ruling that found it lacked legal foundation.
In a televised press conference called after the Hague Court ordered an end to the curfew, which has been in place since January, Rutte said his government would appeal the ruling and that the measure was needed in any case.
The court order deals a blow to the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, as it has repeatedly said the measure was needed to prevent a surge of new infections due to more contagious new mutations of the virus.
But the court sided with an anti-lockdown group’s request that it be scrapped, finding that the government had failed to make clear why it was absolutely necessary to use emergency powers at this stage of the pandemic, as the infection rate was already dropping when the measure went into effect.
The curfew, which allows only people with a pressing need to be outdoors between 9 p.m. and 4:30 a.m., was extended last week until at least March 3.
“The curfew is based on a law for emergency situations, where there is no time for debate with parliament,” the court in The Hague said.
“There was no such pressing need in this case. Far-reaching measures such as these need to be based on proper laws.”
The curfew is the first in the Netherlands since the Second World War.
A firefighter extinguishes a container in Rotterdam, Netherlands, that was set alight during protests in late January against a nationwide curfew. (Peter Dejong/The Associated Press)
A spokesperson for the Justice Ministry said it would need to study the ruling and declined further comment.
Police trade union NPB said the verdict raised questions, such as over the validity of the almost 15,000 fines handed out to people who had ignored the curfew in the past two weeks.
“But we abide by court rulings,” NPB chair Jan Struijs told news agency ANP. “We can’t ignore it.”
A group called Virus Truth that is deeply skeptical of the government’s approach to slowing the spread of the virus had asked the court to outlaw the curfew, which sparked rioting in the first days of its imposition but is widely adhered to by the vast majority of the country.
The curfew is part of a lockdown in which bars, restaurants and non-essential stores have been closed for months.
The number of coronavirus infections in the Netherlands has stabilized in recent weeks, after a steady decline this year.
The total number of confirmed infections since the start of the pandemic surpassed one million last week, with almost 15,000 registered COVID-19 deaths.
-From Reuters and The Associated Press, last updated at 8:45 a.m. ET.
What’s happening across Canada
WATCH | COVID-19 outbreak puts strain on Newfoundland health care:
Hundreds of front-line workers in Newfoundland are in self isolation and it’s adding to the strain on the health-care system caused by a COVID-19 variant outbreak, which is now impacting every public health region on the island. 1:58
As of early Tuesday morning, Canada had reported 826,929 cases of COVID-19, with 35,684 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 21,311.
Newfoundland and Labrador reported seven confirmed new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, with all but one of them in the province’s eastern region. Health officials also reported 21 presumptive cases and one hospitalization.
“You see enough cases, you’re gonna see hospitalizations. That is the sad fact of the matter,” said Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald urged people to follow public health guidance and cautioned that she expects “more cases in the days and weeks ahead.”
Health officials have identified more unlinked chains of transmission, she said, meaning that “COVID is among us and we need to be vigilant.” The province is increasing its testing and contact tracing capacity, Fitzgerald said.
Across Atlantic Canada, both Nova Scotiaand New Brunswick reported one new case of COVID-19 on Monday. There were no new cases reported in Prince Edward Island.
In Quebec, health officials reported 728 new cases of COVID-19 and 16 additional deaths on Monday. Hospitalizations stood at 804, with 136 COVID-19 patients in the province’s intensive care units.
Students in Toronto, as well as Peel and York Regions, in Ontario were slated to return to in-person learning on Tuesday after a period of remote learning, but winter weather prompted school closures in two of those boards. The province did not provide updated case numbers on Monday because of the Family Day holiday, but is expected to resume its updates Tuesday morning.
In British Columbia, there was no update from health officials on the holiday Monday.
Across the North, seven new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Monday in Arviat, a community in Nunavut. There were no new cases reported in the Northwest Territories. In Yukon, a probable case of COVID-19 that was reported last week was confirmed on Monday, health officials said.
WATCH | Reopen Ontario very carefully to avoid another lockdown, expert advises:
Loosen restrictions and reopen schools very carefully in Ontario to avoid an unnecessary lockdown, says infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch. 2:45
Here’s a look at what’s happening across the country:
-From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 7:45 a.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
A health worker shows a photo of her vaccination at Ricardo Palma clinic in Lima, Peru on Monday. The clinic received a batch of Sinopharm vaccines in order to vaccinate health workers as part Peru’s vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. (Raul Sifuentes/Getty Images)
As of early Tuesday morning, more than 109.2 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 61.4 million of those cases listed as recovered or resolved on a tracking site maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 2.4 million.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Australia’s regulator on Tuesday approved the AstraZeneca vaccine as its second for use against the coronavirus. Pfizer’s product will be available in Australia next week. It will be given in two doses three weeks apart, while AstraZeneca’s will be administered in two doses 12 weeks apart.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the regulator, found the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe and effective. Health Minister Greg Hunt said the AstraZeneca vaccine will prevent serious COVID-19 illness.
Morrison will be vaccinated with the Pfizer product and Hunt with AstraZeneca in a demonstration of confidence in both vaccines.
Australia has procured 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and 50 million of those will be manufactured in Australia. The government has also secured 20 million Pfizer vaccines for a population of 26 million.
A medical worker stands inside the coronavirus vaccination centre at the Nair Hospital in Mumbai on Tuesday. (Punit Paranjpe/AFP/Getty Images)
India has detected four cases of the strain of the virus first identified in South Africa, a top government official said on Tuesday. The country has also detected the strain of the virus first identified in Brazil, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) director general Balram Bhargava said.
In Africa, South Africa plans to share the one million AstraZeneca vaccine doses it received from the Serum Institute of India with other African countries via the African Union, a senior health official said on Tuesday. The country paused the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine this month, after preliminary trial data showed it offered minimal protection against mild to moderate illness from the country’s dominant coronavirus variant.
It plans to start inoculating health-care workers with Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine as soon as this week in a research study.
In the Americas, Mexico began the task of vaccinating millions of senior citizens, with dozens of Mexicans aged over 60 years waiting in line for hours because of delays in administering shots.
Colombia will begin vaccinations on Wednesday following the arrival of its first vaccines, which are from Pfizer.
Coronavirus case numbers are stabilizing in parts of the Middle East but the situation remains critical, with more than a dozen countries reporting cases of new variants, the World Health Organization said Monday.
Ahmed al-Mandhari, director of WHO’s eastern Mediterranean region, which comprises most of the Middle East, said in a press briefing from Cairo that at least one of the three new coronavirus variants was reported in the 13 countries in the region. He did not name the countries. All three of the new variants are more contagious, according to WHO.
A woman flashes a victory sign as she receives the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine during a nationwide vaccination campaign at the Saint George Hospital in Beirut on Tuesday. (Hussein Malla/The Associated Press)
Al-Mandhari said there are nearly six million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the region and about 140,000 deaths. WHO urged people to continue taking precautionary measures against the virus.
The organization said 6.3 million vaccinations have been administered in 12 countries in the eastern Mediterranean.
“Vaccinations are a turning point in facing the virus but the vaccines alone are not enough,” al-Mandhari said, noting that physical distancing, wearing masks and keeping clean remain the main ways to fight the spread of the virus.
He said as many people as possible should be vaccinated before they come into contact with any of the new variants of the virus.
WATCH | The challenges, criticisms and success of Israel’s record-setting vaccine rollout:
Israel is leading the world with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout and it’s already seeing results, but the campaign has been met with some hesitant demographics and criticism for not vaccinating Palestinians. 6:05
Al-Mandhari said 37,000 coronavirus vaccine doses from the global COVAX initiative will arrive in the Palestinian territories and 94,000 should arrive in Tunisia in the coming weeks. The program seeks to provide vaccines to developing nations.
Al-Mandhari said overall the number of new coronavirus cases in the region has stabilized, despite increases in some Gulf nations and Lebanon.
Lebanon has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the region in recent weeks with hospitals working at near maximum capacity amid a nationwide lockdown. Lebanon began a vaccination campaign Sunday.
A nation of six million people including a million Syrian refugees, Lebanon has confirmed nearly 340,000 cases.
Iran remains the eastern Mediterranean country with the highest number of confirmed cases at about 1.5 million.
In Europe, Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said the coronavirus variant first reported in Britain represents nearly half of analyzed cases in the country during the second week of February.
Heunicke posted on his Twitter account on Tuesday that he understands the growing need to reopen the country, but “we need to follow the plan of gradual steps so that we maintain epidemic control.”
Earlier this month, Danish schools resumed in-class teaching of kids from preschool to the fourth grade amid a steady decrease of COVID-19 infections. Denmark in December extended restrictions that shuttered all shops except food stores and pharmacies and put a ban on public gatherings of more than five people.
A shipment of a COVID-19 vaccine produced in China arrived in Hungary on Tuesday morning, making the country the first in the European Union to receive a Chinese vaccine. A jet carrying 550,000 doses of the vaccine, developed by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm, landed in Budapest after flying from Beijing.
The shipment is enough to treat 275,000 people with the two-dose vaccine, head of the Epidemiology Department of the National Public Health Center, Dr. Agnes Galgoczy, said at a press conference.
Hungary expects to receive five million total doses of the Sinopharm vaccine over the next four months. The country has sought to purchase vaccines from countries outside the EU’s common procurement program, claiming that delays in the bloc’s rollout is costing lives.
The Sinopharm vaccine, which the developer says is nearly 80 per cent effective, is already in use in Hungary’s non-EU neighbour Serbia, where around half a million ethnic Hungarians have already received the jab.
Hungary has also agreed to purchase two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, which hospitals began administering in Budapest last week.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 8:45 a.m. ET
HALIFAX – A strike that has shuttered libraries in the Halifax region for the past three-and-a-half weeks could come to an end on Thursday now that the employer and union representing hundreds of workers have reached a tentative labour deal.
The Nova Scotia Union of Public and Private Employees Local 14 and Halifax Public Libraries issued a joint statement on Friday announcing the agreement, though they did not share details on its terms.
It said both library workers and the library board will vote on the deal as soon as possible, and branches will re-open for business on Sept. 19 if it’s approved.
Chad Murphy, spokesperson and vice president of NSUPE Local 14, said voting for library workers opened Saturday morning and will close at 12 p.m. Sunday. He declined to share details of the deal but said the membership met to “review the offer in its entirety” on Friday night.
About 340 workers at libraries across the region have been on strike since Aug. 26 as they fought for improvements to wages they said were “miles behind” other libraries in Canada. Negotiations broke down after the employer offered the workers 3.5-per-cent raises in the first year of a new contract, and then three per cent in each of the next three years.
Library service adviser Dominique Nielsen told The Canadian Press in the first week on the picket line that those increases would not bring wages up to a livable wage for many workers, adding that some library workers sometimes have to choose between paying rent and paying for groceries.
When the strike began, employees were working under a collective agreement that expired in April 2023. Librarians make between $59,705 and $68,224 a year under that agreement, while service support workers — who are the lowest paid employees at Halifax Public Libraries — make between $35,512 and $40,460 annually.
By contrast, the lowest paid library workers at the London Public Library in London, Ont.— a city with a comparable population and cost of living to Halifax — make at least $37,756, according to their collective agreement.
Library workers also cited a changing workplace as another reason why they rejected Halifax Public Libraries’ first offer. Libraries have become gathering spaces for people with increasingly complex needs, and it is more common for library workers to take on more social responsibilities in addition to lending books.
“We need to ensure that members are able to care for themselves first before they are able to care for our communities,” an NSUPE strike FAQ page reads.
Other issues at play during the strike have included better parental leave top-up pay for adoptive parents and eliminating a provision of the collective agreement that calls for dismissals for employees who are absent from work for two days or more without approved leave.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 14, 2024.
EDMONTON – RCMP say a second suspect has been arrested in the killing of an Alberta county worker.
Mounties say 28-year-old Elijah Strawberry was taken into custody Friday at a house on O’Chiese First Nation.
Colin Hough, a worker with Rocky View County, was shot and killed while on the job on a rural road east of Calgary on Aug. 6.
Another man who worked for Fortis Alberta was shot and wounded, and RCMP said the suspects fled in a Rocky View County work truck.
Police later arrested Arthur Wayne Penner, 35, and charged him with first-degree murder and attempted murder, and a warrant was issued for Strawberry’s arrest.
RCMP also said there was a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Strawberry, describing him as armed and dangerous.
Chief Supt. Roberta McKale, told a news conference in Edmonton that officers had received tips and information over the last few weeks.
“I don’t know of many members that when were stopped, fuelling up our vehicles, we weren’t keeping an eye out, looking for him,” she said.
But officers had been investigating other cases when they found Strawberry.
“Our investigators were in O’Chiese First Nation at a residence on another matter and the major crimes unit was there working another file and ended up locating him hiding in the residence,” McKale said.
While an investigation is still underway, RCMP say they’re confident both suspects in the case are in police custody.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
RICHMOND, B.C. – The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team says the 26-year-old son of a man found dead on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast has been charged with his murder.
Police say 58-year-old Henry Doyle was found badly injured on a forest service road in Egmont last September and died of his injuries.
The homicide team took over when the BC Coroners Service said the man’s death was suspicious.
It says in a statement that the BC Prosecution Service has approved one count of first-degree murder against the man’s son, Jackson Doyle.
Police say the accused will remain in custody until at least his next court appearance.
The homicide team says investigators remained committed to solving the case with the help of the community of Egmont, the RCMP on the Sunshine Coast and in Richmond, and the Vancouver Police Department.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
