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Coronavirus: What's happening in Canada and around the world Tuesday – CBC.ca

Published

4 years ago

October 27, 2020

The latest:

People in British Columbia and Alberta’s two largest cities are facing tighter restrictions around some social gatherings after an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Monday that while she has often spoken about the need to “balance between minimizing the risk of COVID-19 and minimizing the risk of harms of restrictions,” the province is now “losing the balance we have been seeking.”

The temporary measure, which caps attendance at 15 for events where people will be “mixing and mingling” like parties and baby showers, applies in the Calgary and Edmonton areas.

Alberta has reported a total of 25,733 cases since the pandemic began, with 4,477 of those listed as active cases. As of Sunday, health officials reported 118 people were being treated in Alberta hospitals, with 16 of those patients in ICU beds.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer in British Columbia, also placed restrictions on gatherings on Monday, with a focus on events in people’s homes. Henry said gatherings are now limited to people in an immediate household, plus their so-called “safe six” guests.

WATCH | Dr. Bonnie Henry said mask-wearing is expected in public in B.C.:

B.C.’s provincial health officer says British Columbians must wear non-medical masks in public, but stopped short of making them mandatory. 2:13

“This is a bit of a sobering weekend for us,” she said after provincial health officials reported 817 new cases since Friday.

B.C. has reported a total of 13,371 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, with 2,325 of the cases considered active. The most recent information from health officials said 77 people were in hospital with 26 in intensive care.

What’s happening across Canada

As of 7 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Canada had 220,213 confirmed or presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 184,303 of those as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 9,973.

Manitoba’s provincial public health officer also urged people to avoid gathering in large groups, saying many of the 100 new cases reported in the province on Monday linked back to social gatherings — including Thanksgiving.

Dr. Brent Roussin said if the province’s trajectory continues, health officials expect to have a total of more than 5,000 cases by the end of the week. The province had 4,349 cases as of Monday, with 2,117 considered active. There were 80 people in hospital, with 15 in intensive care.

WATCH | Manitoba frustrated by rise in COVID-19 cases:

As Manitoba sees a continued increase in COVID-19 cases, it’s seeing an unprecedented surge in its hospitals and ICUs. As pressure to close parts of the province mounts — officials are pointing fingers and doctors are bracing for the worst. 1:55

Roussin wasn’t the only Manitoba official with words of warning. Premier Brian Pallister expressed frustration on Monday at people with too many close contacts as cases increase.

“Grow up and stop going out there and giving people COVID,” the premier said.

Saskatchewan reported 54 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, bringing the total number of reported cases in the province to 2,783, with 650 of those considered active cases.

In Ontario, a region west of Toronto is waiting for word on whether tougher measures will be imposed by the province as part of the effort to fight COVID-19. Dr. David Williams, the province’s chief medical officer, said while neither he nor Halton Region’s local medical officer are ready to make a decision on tighter measures for the area, they will be watching case counts and other metrics closely in the coming days.

Quebec Premier François Legault moved Monday to extend restrictions on people living in so-called red zones until Nov. 23, saying daily COVID-19 case numbers and deaths are still too high to allow an easing of limits in places like Montreal and Quebec City.

WATCH | How health authorities are trying to balance restrictions and COVID-19 caseloads:

Infectious disease physician Dr. Zain Chagla discusses how health officials try to balance restrictions and COVID-19 case loads when the data doesn’t show up for weeks after a decision is made. 1:35

In Atlantic Canada, New Brunswick reported three new cases on Monday, bringing the total number of active cases in the province to 60. Health officials in both Nova Scotia and Newfoundland reported one new case, while there were no new cases reported in Prince Edward Island.

There were two new cases reported in Yukon on Monday, and a mine in Nunavut reported that two workers who had been reported as presumptive cases were confirmed as positive for COVID-19. The workers were flown to their home province of Quebec and instructed to self-isolate.

What’s happening around the world

Several potential COVID-19 vaccines are seeing early results from Phase 3 trials, with AstraZeneca saying its has shown results in older and younger participants. Meanwhile, Moderna is so positive about its results it has applied to make its vaccine available earlier. 2:07

A case count maintained by Johns Hopkins University put the number of COVID-19 cases around the world at over 43.5 million as of Tuesday morning with over 29.2 million cases considered recovered. The Baltimore, Md.-based institution’s count of deaths stood at more than 1.1 million.

In the Americas, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the United States is at a two-month high, straining health-care systems in some states.

The White House said on Tuesday it saw a potential deal on COVID-19 stimulus funding in “coming weeks,” casting doubt on whether a deal could be struck with Congress before the Nov. 3 election. A spokesperson for Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that she was hopeful an agreement could be reached ahead of the election, but noted that there were still major issues that needed to be addressed.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, people vote in the U.S. presidential election in the Jurassic Parking structure at Universal Studios Hollywood in Universal City, Calif., on Monday. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

In the Asia-Pacific region, China reported the highest number of asymptomatic infections in nearly seven months. China detected 137 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases on Sunday in Kashgar in the northwestern region of Xinjiang after one person was found to have the virus the previous day — the first local new cases in 10 days in mainland China.

Hong Kong announced it would reopen public beaches and increase the number of people allowed to sit together in bars and restaurants starting Friday as the city continues to unwind strict COVID-19 rules put in place in July.

In India, authorities reported 36,470 newly confirmed coronavirus infections. That’s the lowest one-day tally in more than three months in a continuing downward trend. In its report Tuesday, the country’s health ministry also listed 488 new fatalities from COVID-19 in the previous 24 hours, raising the overall death toll to 119,502.

The case number reported Tuesday is the lowest since India had 35,065 newly confirmed infections on July 17. Last month, the country hit a peak of nearly 100,000 cases in a single day, but daily infections have been decreasing since then.

In Europe, many governments prepared on Tuesday to introduce new restrictions to try to curb a growing surge of coronavirus infections across the continent and provide economic balm to help businesses survive the pandemic.

Italian police officers stand in front of a shattered Gucci store window during a protest of far-right activists against measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, in downtown Turin on Monday. (Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images)

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets across Italy on Monday to vent their anger at the latest round of restrictions, including early closing for bars and restaurants, with demonstrations in some cities turning violent.

In neighbouring France, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin warned the country to prepare for “difficult decisions” after some of the strictest restrictions currently in place anywhere in Europe have failed to halt the spread of the disease.

South Africa remained the hardest hit country in Africa, with more than 716,000 recorded COVID-19 cases and more than 19,000 deaths according to the Africa CDC.

People in Iran, the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, faced new daily records of infections and deaths. Authorities have ordered residents in Tehran to wear masks in public, and many public sector workers in the capital have been told to stay home every second day.

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Justin Trudeau’s Announcing Cuts to Immigration Could Facilitate a Trump Win

Published

3 hours ago

November 5, 2024

Nick Kossovan

Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.

Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.

Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.

My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5^th.

Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.

My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.

To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.

Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…

The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.

The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.

The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.

Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.

In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.

If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.

Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.

______________________________________________________________

Nick Kossovan, a self-described connoisseur of human psychology, writes about what’s

on his mind from Toronto. You can follow Nick on Twitter and Instagram @NKossovan.

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Former athletes lean on each other to lead Canada’s luge, bobsled teams

Published

4 hours ago

November 5, 2024

Anne Joseph

CALGARY – Sam Edney and Jesse Lumsden sat on a bench on Parliament Hill during an athlete celebration after the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

Having just represented Canada in their sliding sports — Lumsden in bobsled and Edney in luge — the two men pondered their futures together.

“There was actually one moment about, are we going to keep going? Talking about, what are each of us going to do? What’s the next four years look like?” Edney recalled a decade later.

“I do remember talking about that now. That was a big moment,” Lumsden said.

As the two men were sounding boards for each other as athletes, they are again as high-performance directors of their respective sliding sports.

Edney, an Olympic relay silver medallist in 2018 and the first Canadian man to win a World Cup gold medal, became Luge Canada’s HPD upon his retirement the following year.

Lumsden, a world and World Cup bobsled champion who raced his third Olympic Games in 2018, leaned on his sliding compatriot when he returned from five years of working in the financial sector to become HPD at Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton in July.

“The first person I called when BCS reached out to me about the role that I’m in now is Sam,” Lumsden said recently at Calgary’s WinSport, where they spent much of their competitive careers and now have offices.

“It’s been four months. I was squatting in the luge offices for the first two months beside him.

“We had all these ideas about we’re going to have weekly coffees and workouts Tuesday and Thursday and in the four months now, we’ve had two coffees and zero workouts.”

Canada has won at least one sliding-sport Olympic medal in each of the last five Winter Games, but Edney and Lumsden face a challenge as team leaders that they didn’t as athletes.

WinSport’s sliding track, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and where Edney and Lumsden did hundreds of runs as athletes, has been closed since 2019 needing a $25-million renovation.

There is no sign that will happen. WinSport took the $10 million the provincial government offered for the sliding track and put the money toward a renovation of the Frank King Lodge used by recreational skiers and snowboarders.

Canada’s only other sliding track in the resort town of Whistler, B.C., has a fraction of Calgary’s population from which to recruit and develop athletes.

“The comparison is if you took half the ice rinks away in the country, hockey and figure skating would be disarray,” Edney said.

“It just changes the dynamic of the sports completely, in terms of we’re now scrambling to find ways to bring people to a location that’s not as easy to get to, or to live out of, or to train out of full time.

“We’re realizing how good we had it when Calgary’s (track) was here. It’s not going to be the end of us, but it’s definitely made it more difficult.”

Lumsden, a former CFL running back as well as an Olympian, returned to a national sport organization still recovering from internal upheaval that included the athlete-led ouster of the former president and CEO after the 2022 Winter Olympics, and Olympic champion pilot Kaillie Humphries suing the organization for her release to compete for the U.S. in 2019.

“NSOs like Luge Canada and Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, they’re startups,” Lumsden said. “You have to think like a startup, operate like a startup, job stack, do more with less, especially in the current environment.

“I felt it was the right time for me to take my sporting experience and the skill set that I learned at Neo Financial and working with some of the most talented people in Canada and try to inject that into an NSO that is in a state of distress right now, and try to work with the great staff we have and the athletes we have to start to turn this thing around.”

Edney, 40, and Lumsden, 42, take comfort in each other holding the same roles in their sports.

“It goes both ways. I couldn’t have been more excited about who they hired,” Edney said. “When Jesse was coming in, I knew that we were going to be able to collaborate and work together and get things happening for our sports.”

Added Lumsden: “We’ve been friends for a long time, so I knew how he was going to do in his role and before taking the role, having the conversation with him, I felt a lot of comfort.

“I asked ‘are you going to be around for a long time?’ He said ‘yeah, I’m not going anywhere.’ I said ‘OK, good.'”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.

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Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup encourage donations for Spanish flood recovery efforts

Published

4 hours ago

November 5, 2024

Anne Joseph

MALAGA, Spain (AP) — With the finals of the Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup set to be played in Malaga, Spain, this month, the International Tennis Federation is making a donation to the Spanish Red Cross to support relief and recovery efforts for the recent catastrophic flooding in the country.

The ITF and its two team tournaments said in a news release Tuesday that they “express their deepest sympathy to the victims and support for the communities and families affected by the devastating floods in Spain and its regions.”

The Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup, along with the ITF, “are donating to the Cruz Roja, and we encourage all our fans and followers to contribute as well.”

The ITF did not say how much it is donating.

Authorities have recovered more than 200 bodies in the eastern Valencia region after heavy downpours caused flash flooding. Police, firefighters and soldiers continued to search Tuesday for an unknown number of missing people.

The Billie Jean King Cup matches are scheduled for Nov. 13-20, and the Davis Cup — the last event of 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal’s career — is set for Nov. 19-24, all in Malaga.

___

AP tennis:

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