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A U.S. official told a World Health Organization meeting on Tuesday that Washington would participate in a program to boost COVID-19 testing, diagnostics and vaccines as it joins global efforts to respond to the pandemic.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed the announcement, which follows confirmation last month that Washington under President Joe Biden will remain in the Geneva-based agency. Former president Donald Trump criticized the agency and halted funding.
“We want to underscore the commitment of the United States to multilateralism and our common cause to respond to this pandemic and improve global public health,” Colin L. McIff, acting director at the Office of Global Affairs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said at a WHO virtual meeting.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is continuing to express concerns about vaccine inequity, noting that 75 per cent of doses have been deployed to just 10 countries. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
The meeting in Geneva aims to help fill a $27-billion US funding gap for the WHO-backed program, called the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator Facilitation Council, that is aimed at broadening global access to COVID-19 fighting tools.
The United States had previously been an observer to ACT.
The United States, the top donor to the WHO, has pledged $4 billion. WHO’s special envoy for the ACT Accelerator, Andrew Witty, a former GlaxoSmithKline CEO, said discussions on further support from the United States were ongoing.
In the same meeting Tedros expressed fresh concerns about vaccine inequity, noting that 90 per cent of countries rolling out COVID-19 vaccines are wealthy and that 75 per cent of doses have been deployed to just 10 countries.
South African Health Minister Zweli Mkhize who co-chairs the meeting, called these “alarming and disappointing numbers which we need to change.”
– From Reuters, last updated at 10:30 a.m. ET
What’s happening in Canada
As of noon ET on Tuesday, Canada had reported 809,970 cases of COVID-19 — with 39,296 considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 20,884.
The new cases are the fewest for the province on a single day, without data problems, since early November. The seven-day average of new daily cases rose slightly to 1,367.
Ontario is reporting 1,022 cases of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> and nearly 30,800 tests completed. Locally, there are 343 new cases in Toronto, 250 in Peel and 128 in York Region. <br> <br>As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 398,633 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
There are now about 13,948 confirmed, active cases provincewide. The number of active cases has steadily declined since its peak at more than 30,500 in mid-January.
Three public health units will be the first to see the stay-at-home order, which was declared four weeks ago, lifted on Wednesday.
Other regions are staying in the grey lockdown phase for now, but the province is making some changes to the restrictions they face. Chief among them is that non-essential retailers will be allowed to open their doors with a 25 per cent capacity limit.
In Quebec, Premier François Legault is expected to provide an update at 1 p.m. ET today, following the reopening of non-essential businesses such as stores, museums and hairdressers on Monday. You can watch it live here.
Customers shop for shoes as a slight easing of COVID-19 restrictions allowed non-essential stores to reopen Monday in Montreal. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)
The province reported 826 new cases and 32 more deaths on Tuesday. Along with new cases, hospitalizations are also trending downward, with 940 people currently in hospital, including 145 in intensive care.
In Atlantic Canada, P.E.I. is reporting one new case, a person who was diagnosed while out of the province and will remain off-Island while recovering. Nova Scotia also reported one new case.
Here’s a look at what’s happening across the country:
– From CBC News, last updated at 12 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
As of Tuesday morning, more than 106.5 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 59.4 million of those cases listed as recovered or resolved by Johns Hopkins University, which maintains a case tracking tool. The global death toll stood at more than 2.3 million.
In the Asia-Pacific region, a World Health Organization team has concluded that the coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and is more likely to have jumped to humans from an animal.
WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek announced that assessment Tuesday at the end of a visit by a WHO team that is investigating the possible origins of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
On the vaccine front, India’s government has ordered 10 million more doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the Serum Institute of India.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Sputnik-V has become the third COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by Pakistan for emergency use, the country’s health minister said.
In the Middle East, dozens of asylum seekers and foreign workers in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv lined up to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday as part of an initiative to inoculate the city’s foreign nationals.
French nuns living in Israel register as they wait to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at a Tel Aviv medical centre on Tuesday during a campaign to vaccinate foreign workers and refugees against the coronavirus. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)
Iran has launched a vaccination drive, focusing initially on hospital intensive care personnel, as the hardest-hit country in the region awaits enough vaccines for its general population.
In Africa, Ethiopia has secured nine million doses of COVID-19 vaccines up until April and hopes to inoculate at least a fifth of its 110 million people by the end of the year, the health minister said.
In the Americas, U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris “virtually toured” a federally supported mass-vaccination site Monday in Glendale, Ariz. The drive-thru 24-hour facility at the State Farm Stadium is giving one COVID-19 shot about every 10 seconds.
Biden and Harris have promised to open 100 similar sites across the country in the coming weeks and have called on Congress to provide funding for even more. Biden has ramped up federal support for the facilities through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pentagon.
The president said he is ahead of pace to deliver on his promise of providing 100 million injections in the first 100 days of his presidency, saying, “I think we’ll exceed that considerably.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that more than 22 million doses have been given since Biden’s inauguration less than three weeks ago.
A Florida resident gets vaccinated at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando on Monday. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/The Associated Press)
In Europe, Germany is planning to spend nearly 9 billion euros ($13 billion Cdn) this year to buy up to 635.1 million COVID-19 vaccines as part of the European Union’s procurement scheme and national deals.
Hungary will start vaccinating people suffering no chronic diseases with Russia’s Sputnik vaccine soon, the surgeon general said, becoming the first European Union country to use it.
Meanwhile, some countries are also ramping up measures to curb COVID infections. Travellers arriving in England face fines and even prison if they flout rules as part of a hotel quarantine policy designed to stop the spread of COVID-19 variants from the most at-risk countries, British health minister Matt Hancock said on Tuesday.
“We will be putting in place tough fines for people who don’t comply. This includes a 1,000-pound ($1,775 Cdn) penalty for any international arrival who fails to take a mandatory test,” Hancock told Parliament.
“Anyone who lies on the passenger locator form and tries to conceal that they’ve been in a country on the red list in the 10 days before arrival here, will face a prison sentence of up to 10 years.”
Sweden plans to restrict the number of passengers on long-distance trains and buses in an effort to prevent a pick-up in new COVID-19 cases and the spread of mutations of the virus that could be more infectious, the government said on Tuesday.
– From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 10:30 a.m. ET
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
