The Ontario government is launching a pilot project that will see people aged 60 to 64 eligible to get vaccinated as soon as this weekend in pharmacies around the province.
As of this Friday, more than 325 pharmacies will be offering the AstraZeneca vaccine to eligible Ontarians, by appointment only, as part of the vaccine delivery pilot program in specific regions. Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the province received 194,500 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Tuesday.
Select pharmacies in three health regions — Toronto, Windsor-Essex, and Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington — began booking appointments on Wednesday. Primary-care physicians will also begin offering vaccines in some health regions, and will contact eligible patients.
WATCH | Ontario Premier Doug Ford outlines the pilot project:
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says over 325 pharmacies will begin administering AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines to people aged 60-64 by Friday. The AstraZeneca shot will also be given to people in that age category in some primary care settings as well. 1:20
“We are going to hit one million doses in the arms of the people of Ontario today,” Retired general Rick Hillier, chair of the Ontario COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Task Force, told reporters from a vaccine distribution clinic in Toronto. He noted that the number will be surpassed this afternoon. “And in the next three weeks, we will do another million.”
More details, including the list of participating pharmacies, can be found here.
What’s else is happening across Canada
As of 2:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Canada had reported 895,814 cases of COVID-19, with 30,458 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 22,332.
Despite concerns about several COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care homes where residents have been vaccinated, experts say vaccines have significantly reduced severe cases and deaths from the virus. 3:48
Ontario reported 1,316 new cases of COVID-19 and 16 new deaths on Wednesday. There were 678 people in hospital due to the illness, including 281 in ICU.
Since the province started administering doses to the general population, the minimum age requirement for registration has varied from region to region.
Quebec reported 792 new cases and 10 new deaths on Wednesday. Across the province, 581 people are hospitalized due to COVID-19, including 112 in intensive care.
WATCH | Veterinarian on joining the ranks of COVID vaccinators in Quebec:
Veterinarian Dr. Caroline Kilsdonk is among those from different professions who are pitching in for the vaccination campaign. A welcome duty, she says, caring deeply about the elderly. 1:03
Across the Prairies, Manitoba reported one additional COVID-19 death and 77 new cases Wednesday. The province released a list of underlying health conditions that will qualify people to receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks. It includes people with heart failure, end-stage renal disease, people receiving home care four times a week, and pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes.
Saskatchewan reported 111 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday and one additional death. The premier defended the decision to ease public health restrictions as the number of known cases of COVID-19 variants rises in the province.
In Alberta, anyone who was born in 1957 can start booking their AstraZeneca vaccine through Alberta Health Service beginning at 8 a.m. local time today. Appointments also open for First Nations, Métis and Inuit people born in 1972.
It’s the first step in a staggered distribution plan for Albertans between the ages of 50 and 64 who want this particular vaccine and do not have a severe chronic illness. The province says appointments will be rolled out in stages by birth year, as long as supplies last.
Newfoundland and Labrador reported no new cases on Wednesday as health officials announced some public health restrictions will be lifted in the Avalon Peninsula.
The region has been in lockdown since early February, after an outbreak of the coronavirus variant B117 swept through the area.
Starting Friday, some non-essential businesses in the Avalon may open, such as hair salons and retail stores. Daycares can also operate at full capacity, but recreational facilities will stay dark.
Also in the Atlantic region, Nova Scotia reported one new COVID-19 case on Wednesday, while New Brunswick reported no new cases. Prince Edward Island officials have not yet updated their numbers.
In the North, restrictions in the community of Arviat, Nunavut were lifted on Wednesday. Businesses, workplaces and daycares can reopen, while schools can reopen part-time.
The territory is reporting no new cases and one recovery to bring its total number of active cases down to 22, all of them in Arviat.
Dr. Michael Patterson, the territory’s chief public health officer, said Tuesday the decision to lift restrictions was made because there is no evidence of COVID-19 circulating uncontrolled in the community.
In the Northwest Territories, people 18 and up are now eligible to be vaccinated.
Here’s a look at what else is happening across the country:
– From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 1:45 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
As of early afternoon ET on Wednesday, more than 117.8 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 66.7 million of those cases listed as recovered by Johns Hopkins University, which maintains a case-tracking tool. The global death toll stood at more than 2.6 million.
The United States Congress passed a landmark $1.9-trillion US COVID-19 relief bill Wednesday, a major triumph for President Joe Biden and the Democrats.
The House gave final congressional approval to the sweeping package by a near party line 220-211 vote precisely seven weeks after Biden entered the White House and four days after the Senate passed the bill without a single Republican vote. Republican lawmakers opposed the package, calling it bloated, crammed with liberal policies and heedless of signs the crises are easing.
Democrats rejected those complaints.
“I call upon my Republican colleagues to stop their March madness and show some compassion for their constituents who are less than wealthy,” said No. 3 House Democratic Leader James Clyburn of South Carolina as the House debated the legislation.
Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions to provide up to $1,400 US direct payments this year to most adults and extend $300 per week emergency unemployment benefits into early September.
U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference about the $1.9-trillion US coronavirus relief package on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. After the Senate passed the aid legislation over the weekend, the House is expected to vote on the revised legislation on Wednesday. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Elsewhere in the Americas, Mexico is turning to China to fill a vaccine shortfall with an order for 22 million doses, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said, a week after the U.S. ruled out sharing vaccines with Mexico in the short term.
Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the Mexican government has signed agreements for 12 million doses of the yet-unapproved Sinopharm vaccine and increased to a total of 20 million doses its contracts for the Coronavac dose made by China’s Sinovac.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Pakistan has started vaccinating people who are 60 years old or above to protect them from COVID-19 amid a steady increase in cases and fatalities from the disease.
Pakistan is currently using China’s Sinopharm vaccine, which was donated to it by Beijing last month. Pakistan hopes to start receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine this month under the World Health Organization’s COVAX Facility.
Japan has decided to stage this summer’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics without overseas spectators due to public concern about COVID-19, Kyodo news agency said on Tuesday, citing officials with knowledge of the matter.
The Tokyo 2020 games organizing committee said in response that a decision would be made by the end of March. The Olympics, postponed by a year because of the pandemic, are scheduled for July 23 to Aug. 8 and the Paralympics from Aug. 24 to Sept. 5.
A woman walks past the Olympic rings in Tokyo on Wednesday. Japan will reportedly stage this summer’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics without overseas spectators. (Koji Sasahara/The Associated Press)
In Africa, Mauritius has gone into lockdown and suspended flights in and out of the island for two weeks following the discovery of 15 more cases of COVID-19, the Mauritius state tourism agency said on Wednesday. All residents and visitors are being asked to stay at home or in their hotels until March 25.
The Indian Ocean island of 1.4 million people has had 641 confirmed coronavirus cases with 10 deaths.
Zimbabwe has authorized the emergency use of four COVID-19 vaccines — Sinopharm and Sinovac shots from China, Russia’s Sputnik V and India’s Covaxin — the minister of information said on Tuesday.
The country of 15 million has recorded 36,321 coronavirus cases and 1,489 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Women do their laundry next to signs reminding people to wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at a farm on the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe, on March 4. (Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/The Associated Press)
In Europe, the European Commission says it has secured an agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech for an extra four million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for its 27 nations to tackle the surge of cases in several coronavirus clusters.
The European Union mentioned Tyrol in Austria, Nice and Moselle in France, Bolzano in Italy, and some parts of Bavaria and Saxony in Germany where COVID-19 hospitalizations have been on the rise. The Commission said the new doses will be made available to all member states on a pro-rata basis this month.
Overall, the EU has six contracts for more than two billion doses of vaccines to inoculate its 450 million people.
Portugal is joining other European countries in extending the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to people age 65 and over, after initial uncertainty about its effectiveness in that age group.
In the United Kingdom, researchers are reporting that a highly infectious coronavirus variant that was first discovered in Britain late last year is between 30 per cent and 100 per cent more deadly than previous dominant variants.
The B117 variant was first detected in Britain in September 2020, and has since also been found in more than 100 other countries.
Students take coronavirus tests at a school in Birmingham, England, on Monday. Millions of British children returned to school this week after a two-month closure. (Jacob King/PA/The Associated Press)
In the Middle East, Palestinian hospitals are overfull and intensive-care units operating at 100 per cent capacity with coronavirus patients in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Tuesday.
Palestinian cities have introduced full lockdowns over the last two weeks to control soaring COVID-19 infections, even as neighbouring Israel has begun to lift restrictions as it proceeds with one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns.
– From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 11:30 a.m. ET
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
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Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
