News
COVID-19 cases are down across Canada, but hospitals aren’t celebrating yet. Here’s why – Global News
As provinces clamp down on non-essential travel and Canada continues its rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, new cases of the novel coronavirus have seen a relative decline across the country.
According to the country’s top public health official, new infections now stand at a national seven-day average of 2,960 cases daily — down from the average 5,270 cases exactly a month earlier. Several health experts and government officials have also said that the country was still on its way to meet its September target of having everyone who wants a vaccine inoculated.
Despite the positive outlook, hospitals and health-care workers aren’t celebrating just yet.
Read more:
Montreal ‘once again the epicentre’ of COVID-19 crisis as city adds hundreds of hospital beds
A report published by the Canadian Institute for Health Information on Thursday found the total number of health-care workers infected with COVID-19 has tripled since July of last year. By Jan. 15, the institute said health-care workers accounted for at least 65,920 — over nine per cent — of Canada’s 695,707 confirmed cases then.
The CIHI report also added 24 health-care workers have died from the virus since the start of the pandemic, including 12 in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta within the last six months.
Gillian Howard, vice-president at University Health Network in Toronto, told Global News that the organization has seen an overall decrease in COVID-19 patients over the last two weeks, but that the health-care system was still in danger of being overwhelmed.
As of last week, she said 95 per cent of the UHN’s beds were occupied and that ICUs were still full — which could pose problems for health-care workers should the COVID-19 variants trigger a third wave.
“The concern is that the variants, which are present in the community, will drive a third wave and that if patients with COVID are admitted to the ICU, the length of stay is much longer than usual,” she said.
“The other concern is the delay in surgeries and procedures for patients who require ICU beds following surgery or because of other health issues.”
‘Psychological trauma’ for years to come
The decreasing case numbers of COVID-19 are encouraging, but Dr. Ann Collins, president of the Canadian Medical Association, noted that “it’s too early to celebrate.”
“No question it is good news, but we still have to be very mindful of the variance and what’s happened in other parts of the world,” she said.
The aggressive nature of the variants is concerning, Collins said, adding that health-care workers are still under a great deal of pressure.
“Being stressed is probably an understatement in many ways,” she said.
Even as cases fall, Collins said many health-care workers — particularly those working in the country’s COVID-19 hotspots — are exhausted, face severe burnout and have been forced to completely isolate themselves from family and friends due to the nature of their jobs.
[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ]
Health-care workers have the added stress of working directly with sick patients who have developed anxiety or depression due to their illness.
“They’ve had to become almost like family to patients that they’ve been caring for in the latter days of their lives because no family has been able to be there with them because of restrictions around visitation and so on,” said Collins.
“We expect to see some psychological trauma well beyond whenever we say that this is over.”
Anthony Dale, president and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association, said that COVID-19 has put pressure on our health system that was “unimaginable a year ago.”
As a result, he said hospital staff have also been re-deployed to provide support to a number of non-hospital services — whether it’s running COVID-19 assessment centres and laboratories, working closely with long-term care homes to protect residents or on Ontario’s vaccination rollout.
According to Dale, the only reason such staff redeployments were even possible in the first place was because COVID-19-related hospitalization crowding cancelled most scheduled and elective surgeries.
Read more:
‘The problem will be mostly staffing’: Ontario ICU doctor on hospital COVID-19 capacity concerns
“Now we have new, highly contagious variants that are circulating in the province, a vaccination roll out that continues to be delayed and a health care system operating under significant stress,” he said.
“A month ago we saw an all-time high of 420 COVID-19 patients in our ICU, while that number has decreased we remain at an alarming 325 patients, which represents almost 20 per cent of open ICU beds today.”
Some provinces seeing improvement
Out of the country’s ten provinces, many say hospitals are now less full than they were at the height of the pandemic, though several still warn of several regions continuing to face strain in terms of capacity.
Last month, Ontario’s hospitalizations peaked at 1,701 patients — including 385 in the ICU, though the numbers have dropped dramatically over the last month to just 680 current hospitalizations due to the virus.
The COVID-19 Modelling Collaborative — a joint collaboration between doctors and scientists from the University of Toronto, University Health Network and Sunnybrook Hospital — said this week that ICU resources were still strained in “every region” and that 43 per cent of Ontario’s surgical ICU’s had fewer than two available beds, however.
Saskatchewan also peaked last month at a total of 238 hospitalized patients, including 33 in the ICU, due to the virus. The number has lowered to that of 135 receiving inpatient care and 16 in the ICU as of Saturday.
Manitoba also saw a gradual decline after peaking at just over 360 hospitalizations in December. As of Saturday, the province registered 189 current hospitalizations due to the virus, of which 27 were admitted to the ICU.
A spokesperson from Manitoba’s Department of Health and Seniors Care said in a statement there were no hospitals within the province currently at or approaching capacity.
“As of midnight today, 206 individuals are in hospitals throughout the province due to COVID, the lowest number seen in this province since early- to mid-November. This includes both active patient cases and those who are past the infectious period but still sick enough to require inpatient care,” the statement read.
Alberta’s demand on its health system from the spread of COVID-19 had also peaked in late December. Despite the decline, the province said that the demand still remained high and warned that a rapid growth in cases would have consequences on its health system.
“We are maintaining the health system’s high capacity right now. If Alberta experienced the same sort of rapid growth that occurred in November and December while hospitalizations remain high, the health system would be severely impacted,” read the government’s website.
A total of 5,000 people have been hospitalized there due to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, with the province currently at 262 hospitalizations — 51 of which are in ICU.
British Columbia health minister Adrian Dix said last week that the province was in a “fairly stable situation with respect to available beds.”
He said B.C.’s health-care system was currently operating at 74 per cent capacity, for a total of 3,531 available regular and surge beds. Meanwhile, he added ICU is operating at 51.7 per cent capacity with 367 available beds.
Quebec, which remains the hardest hit among all provinces, now currently sits at 599 hospitalizations, of which 112 are in intensive care.
The numbers are a far cry from the over 1,870 concurrent hospitalizations the province registered during the first wave of the pandemic, though health experts there have recently warned of a possible “nightmare scenario” of having to pick which patients are admitted to ICU and who will die should hospitalizations rise to similar numbers again.
New Brunswick currently has one person in-hospital with COVID-19, though health systems there have previously warned of staffing and bed shortages caused by the onset of the pandemic.
In Nova Scotia, there is only one person in-hospital with COVID-19, who has been set up in the province’s ICU, while 10 are currently in-hospital with COVID-19 in Newfoundland and Labrador.
P.E.I. currently does not have any patients with COVID-19 admitted to hospital.
© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
|
|
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lawyer for Citigroup Inc told a U.S. judge on Friday he was aware of another large bank that recently made a bigger payment error than Citigroup made last August when it sent $894 million of its own money to Revlon Inc lenders.
Neal Katyal, the lawyer, made the disclosure at a hearing in Manhattan federal court, where Citigroup urged U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman to extend a freeze on $504 million that it has been unable to recoup from the Revlon lenders.
Katyal did not identify the bank, the size of the payment error, or whether the error was fixed.
Citigroup is appealing Furman’s Feb. 16 decision that 10 asset managers, whose clients include Revlon lenders, could keep its mistaken payments.
Furman accepted the asset managers’ argument that Citigroup, as Revlon’s loan agent, paid what they were owed, and they had no reason to think a sophisticated bank would blunder so badly.
Citigroup has said the lenders received a “windfall,” and Furman’s decision could steer banks away from doing wire transfers in a “finders, keepers” marketplace.
Katyal is a partner at Hogan Lovells and former Acting U.S. Solicitor General. Citigroup hired him for its appeal.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Diane Craft)
|
|
By Moira Warburton
VANCOUVER (Reuters) – Canadian authorities will help fund mobile phone service to increase safety along a remote stretch of highway in British Columbia known as the “Highway of Tears” for the number of women who have gone missing on the route, most of them indigenous.
Indigenous groups recommended the move in 2006 in a report on disappearances and murders of women along the highway between the cities of Prince Rupert and Prince George, roughly 800 km (500 miles) north of Vancouver.
The recommendation was endorsed by a provincial government-mandated commission several years later.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating 13 cases of murdered women and five who disappeared on or near the Highway of Tears, although no new cases have been added since 2007. Advocates believe the number of homicides and missing is significantly higher.
Lisa Beare, British Columbia’s minister of citizens’ services, called the project “a critical milestone in helping prevent future tragedies along this route.”
Cell phone plans in Canada are among the most expensive in the world, according to government data, and the cost and lack of coverage in rural areas was a top issue in the last election.
The provincial and federal governments will contribute C$4.5 million towards the C$11.6 million ($9.24 million) cost for Rogers Communications to install 12 cell phone towers, the British Columbia government said on Wednesday.
Lorraine Whitman, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, applauded the plan but said it was only one step in making the area safer for indigenous women.
“This truly is a blessing for the women,” she said. “But not all women have a phone. These towers are being put up, but it makes no use to the person that has no cell phone.”
($1 = 1.2558 Canadian dollars)
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
|
|
By Rod Nickel and Rithika Krishna
(Reuters) –Canada‘s Nutrien Ltd, the world’s largest fertilizer producer by capacity, said on Thursday it aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30% by 2030, in a plan costing the company up to $700 million.
Agricultural companies, including Mosaic and Corteva, have set carbon emissions targets as climate-conscious investors push firms to become more environmentally friendly.
Nutrien plans to spend $500 million to $700 million to meet the carbon emissions target, which includes cutting emissions from nitrogen production by 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually by the end of 2023.
“We’re in a really unique spot to address two big societal challenges – food security, and in a way that reduces our environmental footprint,” said Mark Thompson, Nutrien’s chief corporate development and strategy officer, in an interview.
Synthetic fertilizers account for 12% of global emissions from agriculture, according to a 2016 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report.
Nutrien’s target includes Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which reflect direct operations and electricity use. Nutrien is addressing Scope 3 emissions – those related to on-farm activity – with a program that encourages growers to adopt sustainable practices that generate monetary credits.
The Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based company plans to deploy wind and solar energy at four potash plants by the end of 2025, replacing electricity generated by coal and natural gas.
It also plans to expand its sequestration of carbon emissions from nitrogen fertilizer production and to invest in technology to capture nitrous oxide gas from its facilities.
Nutrien estimates that its carbon credit program could directly amount to $10 to $20 per acre for farmers, and it expects to benefit financially itself as well.
“If we can provide agronomic value and the value of the carbon credit over time, we’ll have customer loyalty – we anticipate that we’ll be a preferred supplier,” Thompson said.
(Reporting by Rithika Krishna in Bengaluru and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Steve Orlofsky)
Britain is ‘bouncing back’ into the same old economy – The Guardian
Imaginations, creativity of Mountview students on display at Cariboo Art Beat – Williams Lake Tribune – Williams Lake Tribune
Citigroup lawyer says another bank made bigger payment error than Revlon
-
Health12 hours agoCOVID-19 in Ottawa: Fast Facts for April 10, 2021
-
Real eState15 hours ago
PGIM Real Estate, Revera Affiliate Target UK Market in Newly Formed JV
-
Health8 hours ago
Canada finance minister: Pandemic an opportunity to bring in national childcare
-
Politics15 hours ago
Prince Philip took a keen interest in Canada, but stayed above politics, former GGs and PM say
-
Economy6 hours ago
Canadian dollar rebounds from one-week low ahead of jobs data
-
News5 hours ago
Canadian fertilizer producer Nutrien to cut greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030
-
Art20 hours ago
Launching the conversation on Newfoundland and Labrador art history
-
Economy6 hours ago
CANADA STOCKS – TSX rises 0.52% to 19,228.87
