TORONTO —
The variant that first emerged in Britain, B.1.1.7, is spreading its fingers across Canada, reaching two new provinces today — and emerging evidence suggests that this variant not only spreads faster, but could be transmitted during relatively brief encounters.
Saskatchewan confirmed Tuesday that two infections involve the B117 variant, while New Brunswick reported three cases of it.
There’s a growing fear across the country that it could lead to rapid outbreaks in senior’s homes and hospitals.
“It only takes one case to have those consequences,” Dr. Jennifer Russell, Chief Medical Officer of Health for New Brunswick, said.
“It is a really fast-moving strain. It infects people very, very quickly and in higher numbers. And when the strain gets in, for a population it’ll be very difficult to get ahead of it and stay ahead of it with contact tracing and self-isolation as we have done in the past.”
Alberta also reported new cases of variant infections, which may have triggered an outbreak at a daycare. Two Calgary schools have also been placed in quarantine after two children were determined to have attended school while infectious.
In several of these cases, officials are saying travel is a key source.
“It’s not just one or two countries,” Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said. “It’s many different countries where we are seeing people picking up those variants of concern and then coming back into Alberta.”
The variant has also developed another mutation, called E484K, which makes it more likely to evade any immunity people have developed, either naturally or with vaccines.
“It is a really worrying mutation,” Dr. Ravi Gupta, with the University of Cambridge, said. “It’s a variant that transmits faster, so this is a worrying development.”
And doctors in Canada are seeing first-hand how quickly some of the variants of the novel coronavirus can spread, even among people who were following public health precautions. In Ontario, York region has been tracking the B.1.1.7 variant, and according to Dr. Karim Kurji, medical officer of health for the region, the variant might take much less time to infect people than the original strain before it.
“When we interviewed the cases, we discovered that some of them have actually not spent more than a minute, or two minutes, doing some essential shopping in places,” Kurji told CTV News.
“It gives us the impression that this [is] being transmitted very fast indeed.”
The region only had 15 variant cases last week. Now, they have 39 cases. In some situations, Kurji said, the incubation period of the virus is very short as well.
“In one case, it was only 18 hours to two days, so that indicates that [the variant] is very transmissible,” he said.
York region has a specific unit concentrating on cases of the B.1.1.7 variant now, focusing on contact tracing and making that each case is self-isolating.
Many of the cases in York region are not connected directly to travel, showing that there is community spread of this variant.
“For the ones that have acquired it abroad, it is a spectrum of countries,” Kurji said. “Countries like Ghana, Israel, the Maldives, Egypt, the U.K. So that tells me that the variant is probably prevalent across many countries in the world.”
It’s not the only variant causing concern. In the U.K., health officials are recommending aggressive testing of communities to control more contagious variants of the coronavirus after 11 cases of B 1.351, the variant that first emerged in South Africa, were found in one community.
Health experts are concerned that with talk of lifting restrictions, these new variants could trigger another boom in cases because of the much greater risk they pose.
Kurji pointed out that if these more contagious variants become the dominant strain, our vaccination goals have to change.
“For example, the herd immunity that we’ve been aiming for is around 70 per cent vaccination. If we have a predominance of these variants, we may have to aim for herd immunity that might be closer to 85 per cent, which is going to be rather difficult to achieve. And that may mean a protraction of the COVID-19 endemic,” he said.
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.
