OTTAWA —
The medical officer of health for the Eastern Ontario Health Unit is urging residents to be cautious this holiday season to help curb the spread of COVID-19 or more restrictions could be around the corner.
Speaking on Newstalk 580 CFRA’s “Ottawa at Work with Leslie Roberts”, Dr. Paul Roumeliotis said the EOHU is at the upper end of the “Orange-Restrict” limits.
“Our numbers in certain areas are higher than even the orange zone,” he said. “Overall, we’re in the orange zone but certain pockets are higher, particularly when we have huge clusters of cases in a day, but we look at the overall trends and, right now, we’re solidly in the upper limits of orange.”
The EOHU officially moved to the “Orange-Restrict” level on Monday amid rising case counts. Dr. Roumeliotis said over the weekend, the region added dozens of new infections.
“Between Friday and yesterday we added 63 cases and we’re less than a quarter of the population of Ottawa.”
Ontario looks at several factors when deciding when to move regions to higher or lower levels of restrictions, including the number of new cases in the past seven days per 100,000 population, the rate at which people are testing positive, and the rate at which the virus is spreading, among other factors. The changes are announced each Friday and come into effect the following Monday.
According to the EOHU’s COVID-19 dashboard update on Tuesday, 333 people in the region have active cases of COVID-19. The EOHU has a population of approximately 202,000 people, according to 2016 census figures. Ottawa had 364 active COVID-19 cases, according to Ottawa Public Health’s most recent update, but has a population of just over one million residents.
Dr. Roumeliotis called Ottawa’s numbers “pleasantly surprising”, considering the trends he is seeing are not unique to the EOHU.
“We’re seeing this all over Ontario. They entered a couple of other health units into lockdown. Other health units went to red. We’re seeing this not only in our area, we’re seeing it across Canada,” he said.
When asked whether the EOHU could move to the red zone in the near future, Dr. Roumeliotis said it’s possible.
“If the numbers keep continuing upwards, we could be red. When we look at the numbers we have to look at context, are they more clusters of cases or more distributed? If they’re more distributed and we don’t even know the source, that is another factor contributing to that,” he said. “We’re also looking at our positivity rates of our testing and our reproductive factor, both of which were orange last week.”
Dr. Roumeliotis said that most of the infections they’re finding in the region come from clusters of people, including families, or coworkers.
“It’s not that they’re gathering in huge numbers, but when they’re gathering outside their home bubble, they’re not taking the precautions. For example, at work, they do very well with the public, but they go in the back and they have lunch together without masking and physical distancing and that’s where we’re seeing spread,” he said.
Movement to red not expected this week
Later in the day, Dr. Roumeliotis said the EOHU will remain in “Orange-Restrict” level for now.
Speaking to CTV News Ottawa, he said he spoke with the province’s chief medical officer of health and noted that some metrics have trended in the right direction recently.
“The other indicators, which are the reproductive number–in other words the rate of infection–have gone down, comparatively speaking, as has our positivity rate,” he said. “So, those two are still orange zone. So, if you take all those into account, and the fact that we just went into orange this week, we’re going to wait another week and see and hopefully we can get the trends going downwards.”
The EOHU reported ten new cases of COVID-19 in its region on Tuesday, which Dr. Roumelitois said is encouraging after higher numbers over the weekend.
Light at the end of the tunnel
Dr. Roumeliotis is urging residents in his area to follow COVID-19 protocols like staying within one’s household this Christmas, wearing masks, keeping physical distance, and practicing good hand hygiene. He says, with vaccines around the corner, there is light at the end of the tunnel but cautioned against complacency.
“It’s been a tough nine months. We’re approaching Christmas and we want to be with our families. This is not the time to do so,” he told CFRA’s Leslie Roberts. “Let’s be a bit more patient and use the vaccine as an incentive. There is a light at the end of the tunnel; however, people should realize this is not an overnight solution.”
The first vaccines in Ontario were given this week. Select people in Ottawa began receiving vaccines on Tuesday. However, there is only a small number of doses to begin with and vaccinating the population is expected to take several months.
Speaking to CTV News, Dr. Roumeliotis stressed that people must continue to follow all COVID-19 guidelines.
“We saw the numbers go up after Labour Day, so we don’t want to do that again,” he said. “I believe that people will get the message. I think the fact that they are seeing our numbers go up, the people now see that this is the chance for us to not go any further in the wrong direction so, collectively, I’m pretty confident that our community will get together and help us go in the right direction, back towards yellow and lower numbers.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
