This is an excerpt from Second Opinion, a weekly roundup of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers every Saturday morning. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
Like it or not, COVID-19 vaccine mandates are coming to Canada.
Whether they’re government-ordered for certain jobs and activities, or implemented in a piecemeal way by the private sector, Canadians can expect to see more aspects of society require proof of vaccination in the weeks and months ahead.
Michelle Quick, 33, gets her second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a one-day pop-up clinic in the Eaton Centre shopping mall in Toronto on July 27. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
“They’re coming — one way or the other,” said Raywat Deonandan, a global health epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa.
“Do you want to do it while we are calm in the water? Or do you want to do it when the storm is raging around us?”
Pedestrians in Toronto carry and don masks on Aug. 12. Health officials are citing rising COVID-19 case counts as a sign Ontario is in a fourth wave of infection. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Provinces ‘choosing their own adventure’
Instead of a co-ordinated approach across the country, a patchwork system of vaccine certification is emerging throughout Canada as some provinces outright oppose the concept while others fully embrace it.
Quebec took the bold first step of announcing this week that vaccine passports for non-essential services, like bars, restaurants, gyms and festivals, would be mandated on Sept. 1 in an effort to avoid reintroducing lockdown measures.
But Alberta has repeatedly said it will not bring in vaccine passports and Premier Jason Kenney has outright dismissed the notion of mandatory vaccinations, even amending the province’s Public Health Act to remove a 100-year-old power allowing the government to force people to be vaccinated.
But while Ottawa has taken a hard line on vaccine mandates and committed to creating proof-of-vaccination documentation for international travel by early fall, it stopped short of implementing a domestic vaccine passport system across Canada.
“Unfortunately, the provincial and territorial scene is likely to remain a patchwork for ideological reasons,” said Dr. David Naylor, who led the federal inquiry into Canada’s response to the 2003 SARS epidemic and now co-chairs the federal government’s COVID-19 immunity task force.
“And I don’t think the federal government can force vaccine certificates on subnational jurisdictions.”
Ottawa working out details of vaccine passport
2 days ago
The federal government says it is working on the details of a COVID-19 vaccine passport that can be used for international travel, which it hopes will be available by the fall. 1:36
Naylor says he hopes the federal government can work with provinces and territories to adapt the newly announced vaccine document for international travel into a national vaccine passport for use in all provinces and territories in the future.
“The provinces would probably wave that idea off,” he said. “But in a rational universe, we’d have one standardized Canadian document for domestic and international use.”
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases physician and member of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine task force, says it’s become clear that Canada will not take a national approach to vaccine certification because the federal government doesn’t have the authority to direct provinces and territories to come on board.
“We’re going to have vastly different strategies, with Alberta at one end of the spectrum, and Quebec at the other end of the spectrum — and probably many provinces in between,” he said.
“But from a policy standpoint, it’s clear that the provinces are choosing their own adventure.”
Instead of a co-ordinated approach across the country, a patchwork system of vaccine certification is emerging throughout Canada as each province and territory takes its own path. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Mandating vaccines ‘not the be all and end all’
The question remains as to how effective vaccine mandates will be in controlling the spread of COVID-19 among the unvaccinated during the fourth wave, and whether testing is sufficient enough to keep community transmission low.
“You can definitely see how mixing vaccinated and unvaccinated people in high-risk environments could ripple out into unvaccinated populations — particularly ones that are high risk,” said Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases physician at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton and an associate professor at McMaster University.
“It makes sense if you get to a certain community incidence, where the odds of someone walking into that place with COVID-19 are starting to get higher and higher by the day, it could start a chain effect.”
Chagla says Quebec’s approach of only mandating vaccines for non-essential services prevents ostracizing those who aren’t vaccinated — due to choice, eligibility or accessibility — while encouraging more people to get vaccinated so they can engage in more activities.
He doesn’t think vaccine passports are the “be all and end all” in the push to get people vaccinated. “But it certainly is a downstream effect that you do bring people on board and … make them minimize the risk even more going forward,” he said.
“The verification of vaccines is going to be really important, especially as we’re struggling with this in the next little while — maybe the next six months — where we’re going to see a little bit of discomfort with more transmission.”
People walk by a COVID-19 vaccination sign in Montreal on Aug. 8. Quebec became the first province in Canada this week to introduce a wide-ranging vaccine passport system, to begin on Sept. 1. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)
Dr. Lisa Barrett, an infectious diseases physician and immunologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, says that while she’s fully in favour of vaccine passports, there are other options for keeping Canadians safe in high-risk settings for COVID-19 transmission.
“We want to protect public places and people attending them by not having infectious folks around. You can do that with double vaccine — or by showing a negative test for the minority not vaccinated for various reasons,” she said.
“It’s obviously better on a personal front to be vaccinated, but it preserves some choice while people are getting there.”
Barrett says while she prefers vaccination for controlling COVID-19 levels, she hates the idea of exclusion until all other options have been exhausted; she points to the ample supply of rapid antigen tests in Canada to help bridge the gap.
Bogoch agrees that while vaccine mandates are an effective strategy at increasing our vaccination levels across the country, unvaccinated Canadians are a diverse population with many different reasons for foregoing a shot — and that needs to be approached with care.
“Some people still have remaining questions and issues and anxiety that hasn’t been addressed. We obviously have to take those questions and issues and anxieties seriously, and address that in an empathetic manner,” he said.
“I think it’s also fair to say that some people regardless of what we say — regardless of science, reason, logic — some people are just never going to get vaccinated.”
‘Window of opportunity’ to prevent brutal 4th wave
Canada has emerged as one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, with more than 60 per cent of the Canadian population fully vaccinated after a relatively slow start to the rollout.
But with 40 per cent of the population with lower protection from COVID-19, with only one shot or none at all, there are still millions of susceptible Canadians — especially in the face of the more contagious and potentially more deadly delta variant.
Unvaccinated adults driving COVID-19 case increase in Canada
4 days ago
There is growing concern about a fourth wave of COVID-19 as cases start to climb again across much of Canada, with the increase being overwhelmingly driven by unvaccinated people in western provinces. 1:54
“Given the fact that we’re about to open everything up, it seems likely that those 40 per cent are going to get infected at some point, which means that we’re going to have a lot of stress on our society,” Deonandan said.
“There’s a window of opportunity to prevent a lot of societal suffering and frankly, the selling point should be to businesses — do you want to stay open? Do you want your employees to have jobs? This is what we do to make sure that happens, because we see a storm coming.”
TORONTO – Will Taylor Swift bring chaos or do we all need to calm down?
It’s a question many Torontonians are asking this week as the city braces for the arrival of Swifties, the massive fan base of one of the world’s biggest pop stars.
Hundreds of thousands are expected to descend on the downtown core for the singer’s six concerts which kick off Thursday at the Rogers Centre and run until Nov. 23.
And while their arrival will be a boon to tourism dollars — the city estimates more than $282 million in economic impact — some worry it could worsen Toronto’s gridlock by clogging streets that already come to a standstill during rush hour.
Swift’s shows are set to collide with sports events at the nearby Scotiabank Arena, including a Raptors game on Friday and a Leafs game on Saturday.
Some residents and local businesses have already adjusted their plans to avoid the area and its planned road closures.
Aahil Dayani says he and some friends intended to throw a birthday bash for one of their pals until they realized it would overlap with the concerts.
“Something as simple as getting together and having dinner is now thrown out the window,” he said.
Dayani says the group rescheduled the gathering for after Swift leaves town. In the meantime, he plans to hunker down at his Toronto residence.
“Her coming into town has kind of changed up my social life,” he added.
“We’re pretty much just not doing anything.”
Max Sinclair, chief executive and founder of A.I. technology firm Ecomtent, suggested his employees avoid the company’s downtown offices on concert days, saying he doesn’t see the point in forcing people to endure potential traffic jams.
“It’s going to be less productive for us, and it’s going to be just a pain for everyone, so it’s easier to avoid it,” Sinclair said.
“We’re a hybrid company, so we can be flexible. It just makes sense.”
Swift’s concerts are the latest pop culture moment to draw attention to Toronto’s notoriously disastrous daily commute.
In June, One Direction singer Niall Horan uploaded a social media video of himself walking through traffic to reach the venue for his concert.
“Traffic’s too bad in Toronto, so we’re walking to the venue,” he wrote in the post.
Toronto Transit Commission spokesperson Stuart Green says the public agency has been working for more than a year on plans to ease the pressure of so many Swifties in one confined area.
“We are preparing for something that would be akin to maybe the Beatles coming in the ‘60s,” he said.
Dozens of buses and streetcars have been added to transit routes around the stadium, and the TTC has consulted the city on potential emergency scenarios.
Green will be part of a command centre operated by the City of Toronto and staffed by Toronto police leaders, emergency services and others who have handled massive gatherings including the Raptors’ NBA championship parade in 2019.
“There may be some who will say we’re over-preparing, and that’s fair,” Green said.
“But we know based on what’s happened in other places, better to be over-prepared than under-prepared.”
Metrolinx, the agency for Ontario’s GO Transit system, has also added extra trips and extended hours in some regions to accommodate fans looking to travel home.
A day before Swift’s first performance, the city began clearing out tents belonging to homeless people near the venue. The city said two people were offered space in a shelter.
“As the area around Rogers Centre is expected to receive a high volume of foot traffic in the coming days, this area has been prioritized for outreach work to ensure the safety of individuals in encampments, other residents, businesses and visitors — as is standard for large-scale events,” city spokesperson Russell Baker said in a statement.
Homeless advocate Diana Chan McNally questioned whether money and optics were behind the measure.
“People (in the area) are already in close proximity to concerts, sports games, and other events that generate massive amounts of traffic — that’s nothing new,” she said in a statement.
“If people were offered and willingly accepted a shelter space, free of coercion, I support that fully — that’s how it should happen.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Hundreds of Taylor Swift fans lined up outside the gates of Toronto’s Rogers Centre Wednesday, with hopes of snagging some of the pop star’s merchandise on the eve of the first of her six sold-out shows in the city.
Swift is slated to perform at the venue from Thursday to Saturday, and the following week from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23, with concert merchandise available for sale on some non-show days.
Swifties were all smiles as they left the merch shop, their arms full of sweaters and posters bearing pictures of the star and her Eras Tour logo.
Among them was Zoe Haronitis, 22, who said she waited in line for about two hours to get $300 worth of merchandise, including some apparel for her friends.
Haronitis endured the autumn cold and the hefty price tag even though she hasn’t secured a concert ticket. She said she’s hunting down a resale ticket and plans to spend up to $600.
“I haven’t really budgeted anything,” Haronitis said. “I don’t care how much money I spent. That was kind of my mindset.”
The megastar’s merchandise costs up to $115 for a sweater, and $30 for tote bags and other accessories.
Rachel Renwick, 28, also waited a couple of hours in line for merchandise, but only spent about $70 after learning that a coveted blue sweater and a crewneck had been snatched up by other eager fans before she got to the shop. She had been prepared to spend much more, she said.
“The two prized items sold out. I think a lot more damage would have been done,” Renwick said, adding she’s still determined to buy a sweater at a later date.
Renwick estimated she’s spent about $500 in total on “all-things Eras Tour,” including her concert outfit and merchandise.
The long queue for Swift merch is just a snapshot of what the city will see in the coming days. It’s estimated that up to 500,000 visitors from outside Toronto will be in town during the concert period.
Tens of thousands more are also expected to attend Taylgate’24, an unofficial Swiftie fan event scheduled to be held at the nearby Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Meanwhile, Destination Toronto has said it anticipates the economic impact of the Eras Tour could grow to $282 million as the money continues to circulate.
But for fans like Haronitis, the experience in Toronto comes down to the Swiftie community. Knowing that Swift is going to be in the city for six shows and seeing hundreds gather just for merchandise is “awesome,” she said.
Even though Haronitis hasn’t officially bought her ticket yet, she said she’s excited to see the megastar.
“It’s literally incredible.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
OTTAWA – Via Rail is asking for a judicial review on the reasons why Canadian National Railway Co. has imposed speed restrictions on its new passenger trains.
The Crown corporation says it is seeking the review from the Federal Court after many attempts at dialogue with the company did not yield valid reasoning for the change.
It says the restrictions imposed last month are causing daily delays on Via Rail’s Québec City-Windsor corridor, affecting thousands of passengers and damaging Via Rail’s reputation with travellers.
CN says in a statement that it imposed the restrictions at rail crossings given the industry’s experience and known risks associated with similar trains.
The company says Via has asked the courts to weigh in even though Via has agreed to buy the equipment needed to permanently fix the issues.
Via said in October that no incidents at level crossings have been reported in the two years since it put 16 Siemens Venture trains into operation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
