As provinces prepare to receive the first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine next week, top health officials have warned Canadians against complacency in guarding against the respiratory illness.
Canada is still on a “rapid-growth” trajectory for COVID-19 cases, and the number of deaths from the respiratory illness could hit nearly 15,000 in another two weeks, Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said on Friday.
More than 13,250 deaths have been attributed to the novel coronavirus since the pandemic began. The current caseload of more than 448,000 could grow to an estimated 577,000 by Christmas Day, according to federal forecasts.
Tam said Canada could see an average of 12,000 new cases of infection daily, with increasing hospitalizations and deaths, by the beginning of January “unless significant reductions in contact rates are achieved.”
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was approved by Health Canada on Wednesday, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday said, “A vaccine in a week or in a month won’t help you if you get COVID-19 today.”
In Manitoba, eligible health-care workers can start booking appointments on Saturday to receive COVID-19 immunizations in Winnipeg. Vaccinations will be administered from Wednesday to Friday at the University of Manitoba Rady Faculty of Health Sciences campus.
The province is restricting access for now because there is only enough of the Pfizer vaccine to vaccinate about 900 people, according to a memo from Manitoba’s Vaccine Implementation Task Force issued late Friday.
WATCH | Tam talks about the strain on the health-care system:
Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tam, updates reporters with the rising number of COVID 19 cases in regions across the country and reveals modeling projections. 0:50
Tam said that over the past week, an average of 2,900 patients with COVID-19 were being treated in Canadian hospitals on any given day, including 565 people in intensive care.
Canada is expected to receive up to 249,000 doses of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine before the end of the year.
The co-chair of the federal task force studying COVID-19 immunity is warning that the arrival of vaccines in Canada doesn’t guarantee protection against the novel coronavirus or signal that people’s lives will soon return to normal.
Dr. Catherine Hankins told CBC’s The House that there are still too many unknowns about COVID-19 immunity and the effectiveness of vaccines to quickly move beyond the pandemic measures now in place, such as mask mandates and limits on social and business activities.
What’s happening across Canada
As of 10:30 a.m. ET on Saturday, Canada’s COVID-19 case count stood at 450,714, with 73,228 of those cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 13,268.
Health officials in British Columbia on Friday reported 737 new cases of COVID-19 and 11 more deaths. Friday’s report comes a day after B.C. posted 28 COVID-19 deaths — a single-day high for the province that Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry described as “one of the most tragic days we have had yet.”
WATCH | Hospitals in northern B.C. fill up as COVID-19 cases surge:
Fear and concern are growing in remote areas of British Columbia, as COVID-19 cases surge and the limited hospital beds available are quickly filling up. 2:06
Alberta reported 1,738 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, along with 18 deaths. Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said on Thursday that new restrictions brought in this week should serve as a warning to Albertans about how serious the pandemic has become.
The health system “is in trouble, and we need to work together to save it,” Hinshaw said.
Public health officials in Saskatchewan announced 246 new cases on Friday. The total of known active COVID-19 cases in the province has now dropped to 4,547, after public health officials deemed another 387 cases as recovered.
WATCH | University students grapple with how to return home for the holidays safely:
When provinces ask people to stay within their households, what about the university students coming home for an extended holiday break? A look at the decisions some students are grappling with because of a lack of guidance as well as what a health expert recommends to make sure the holiday homecoming is safer. 1:49
The province said the number of known active cases could be inflated due to a backlog of data review.
Manitoba‘s chief public health officer on Friday said the provincial death rate from COVID-19 has increased by more than nine times since Thanksgiving. Dr. Brent Roussin also announced 447 more infections and 14 deaths.
Ontario‘shealth minister on Saturday reported 1,873 new cases of COVID-19. Locally, there are 522 new cases in Toronto, 436 in Peel Region, 185 in York Region and 109 in Hamilton, Christine Elliott said in a tweet.
The province announced on Friday that two more regions will enter lockdown first thing on Monday. Bars, shopping malls and gyms in Windsor-Essex and York Region will be closed, and indoor dining at restaurants will be banned.
WATCH | 2 more regions in southern Ontario set to go into lockdown:
As Ontario sets a record for the most COVID-19 deaths on a single day in this second wage, people in two more health regions are now preparing to go into lockdown on Monday: Windsor-Essex and York Region. 2:42
The move comes three weeks after Toronto and Peel Region, the other hardest-hit parts of the province, were placed into the “grey” or lockdown-level zone of Ontario’s COVID-19 framework. The case counts in those regions have continued to climb steadily since.
The provincial government also said Middlesex-London, Simcoe Muskoka and Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph will move into the red “control” zone. Ontario reported 1,848 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, along with 45 additional deaths.
In Quebec, health officials reported 1,713 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday and 53 additional deaths, bringing the provincial death toll to 7,435. COVID-19 hospitalizations increased to 871, with 123 people in intensive care, according to a provincial dashboard.
New Brunswick reported eight new cases on Friday, along with one more death. Dr. Jennifer Russell, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said the Edmundston region is being moved into the more restrictive “orange” level of restrictions at midnight due to a growing outbreak.
Across the North, Nunavut reported 16 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday. All are in the community of Arviat, bringing the total number of active cases there to 56.
Dr. Kami Kandola, chief public health officer of the Northwest Territories, said in a news release late Thursday that five travel-related cases had been reported in Yellowknife.
Yukon reported no new cases on Thursday and had not yet provided an update on Friday.
What’s happening around the world
As of Friday evening, more than 70 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 45 million of those considered recovered or resolved, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 1.5 million.
The United States on Friday authorized the use of a vaccine from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, with the first inoculations expected within days, marking a turning point in a country where the pandemic has killed nearly 300,000 people.
Health-care workers and elderly people in long-term care facilities are expected to be the main recipients of a first round of 2.9 million doses this month.
In Europe, another 761 people died of COVID-19 on Friday in Italy, bringing the country’s death toll from the virus to 63,387, just behind Britain’s toll of 63,603 dead, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Prince William and Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge, with two of their three children, Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte, attend a special pantomime performance on Friday at London’s Palladium Theatre to thank health workers and their families for their efforts during the pandemic. (Aaron Chown/WPA pool/Getty Images)
France registered 13,406 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to more than 2.35 million, and the number of hospitalizations continued the downward trend, data released by the health authorities showed on Friday.
Hospitalizations fell by 256 to 24,975, and the number of patients in intensive care units dropped by 75 to 2,884, maintaining a running slowdown first recorded on Nov. 14.
Several tourists attractions in Paris, including the iconic Louvre and Eiffel Tower, will remain closed during the nation’s second stage of lifting lockdown measures, which will start on Dec. 15.
In Africa, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune marks a year in office on Saturday, but he is nowhere in sight since his evacuation to Germany more than six weeks ago for treatment of COVID-19.
The president’s office issued a statement on Nov. 30 saying Tebboune had left a “specialized” medical facility, was continuing his convalescence and should be returning home “in the coming days.”
The statement compounded the growing mystery surrounding the 75-year-old Tebboune, his whereabouts and his health. The clinic where he was treated was never made public.
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
