There are no new cases of COVID-19 in Newfoundland and Labrador on Friday, with eight new recoveries in the Eastern Health region, leaving 26 active cases in the province.
One of those recoveries was a person who was hospitalized due to the virus. One person remains in hospital.
To date, 121,549 people have been tested, including 201 since Thursday’s update.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald said the province has administered more than 48,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine so far, and the arrival of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine shipment means first responders can receive their shots sooner than anticipated.
Fitzgerald said additional priority groups for the initial shipment of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine include border services staff, search and rescue teams, sheriffs’ officers, corrections officers and other enforcement groups.
First responders rolled up their sleeves on Friday at vaccination clinics.
Firefighters, paramedics and police offers were sent to a clinic set up on Mundy Pond Road in St. John’s. Vaccinations for the same group of workers got underway on Thursday in the Central Health region.
“We have been incredibly fortunate to have low prevalence of COVID over the last year, and this has allowed us more freedoms than many other jurisdictions. We cannot take this for granted,” she said.
“Following public health measures is our best chance to keep COVID-19 under control in our communities, and it will take our continued determination and discipline. But I know we’re up for this challenge and we’ve come too far to stop now.”
Summer planning
As more vaccines roll out “the brighter things become,” said Premier Andrew Furey.
“Here we are with news of an Atlantic bubble being reestablished, hopefully, a month from today,” he said.
“This is excellent news for our tourism sector heading into the summer.”
The plan to re-establish an Atlantic bubble, announced Thursday, is contingent on low prevalence of the coronavirus in each of the Atlantic provinces, and Newfoundland and Labrador dropping to Alert Level 2 by the tentative date of April 19.
Fitzgerald said Alert Level 2 will be similar to its previous iteration, a conservative approach with a gradual expansion of gathering sizes, with some slight differences, such as an increased focus on keeping contacts low.
Watch the full March 19 update:
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Furey said staycations will also help the struggling local tourism industry, which over the last year has been battered by the pandemic and the province’s travel restrictions.
“If you haven’t really explored our province, this summer is a great time to do so. Start planning now, your province needs you and the ask is simple and so rewarding,” he said.
Fitzgerald said COVID-19 numbers are low across the Atlantic region, and if they stay that way, an Atlantic bubble can be reopened safely.
Haggie said “a new summer” is becoming more concrete as the days pass and good news continues. But planning still hinges on following public health guidelines and keeping COVID-19 prevalence low while the province administers vaccinations, which relies on supply numbers, Haggie said.
“The variants of concern are still out there, and there are new ones that are popping up from time to time which are potentially very troublesome,” he said.
“It’s only by using our public health knowledge and the advice of Dr. Fitzgerald and her team that we can manage these at the moment. So with that, we need to hold the line on public health as our vaccine numbers increase.”
Return to play
Fitzgerald said she recognizes that athletes in team sports are disappointed that they are slow to resume in this reopening plan, but explained variants of concern spread far easier and faster than the original strain.
In the most recent outbreak, caused by the coronavirus variant B117, Fitzgerald said the virus spread quickly through families, social networks and workplaces, so much so that cases were doubling in slightly less than every two days.
Fitzgerald said the outbreak was also linked to sports, but noted sports are not the only cause.
The issue with sports was the number of contacts people had while playing them, she said.
“We were fortunate to have detected the virus when we did. We were days away from this virus spreading across the province and becoming much more difficult to contain,” she said.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says public health is asking sports organizations to put together return to play plans. (Colleen Connors/CBC)
Fitzgerald said variants are becoming the dominating strains of the virus across the country, which changes the epidemiology and the level of risk.
“The most critical thing for us right now is to keep our contacts low, and I cannot stress enough the importance of this,” she said.
“We cannot ignore the reality that group activities, including team sports, result in multiple contacts for each individual. And this is compounded by the interaction of different teams and individuals involved in multiple types of sports and activities.”
Fitzgerald said public health is engaging with sports associations and requesting return-to-play strategies, adding the plans will have to look differently than what they were a year ago.
Larger opening
Thursday saw the release of an interim tourism industry report. Its seemingly bold summary suggested N.L. should open its borders to all Canadians by July 1.
That doesn’t quite line up with what the province’s top health-care professionals said Wednesday.
First, Dr. Proton Rahman, a clinical scientist with Eastern Health and professor of medicine at Memorial University, said about 49 per cent of new cases in Ontario are being reported as the coronavirus variant B117, and the province is predicting a third wave.
“It’s reasonable to assume that if the numbers go up in Ontario, because a lot of our importations are from that province, we’re going to see more cases. For every case that lands at our border from Ontario from now on there’s a 50 per cent chance that they will have the B117 variant,” he said.
Second, when asked about opening up N.L.’s borders to everyone, Fitzgerald said it’s too soon to make that declaration.
During Friday’s briefing Fitzgerald said the province will need to see what will happen over the next couple of months as vaccinations increase.
“If we start to see that, as we vaccinate more people, we see a reduction in spread in some of those provinces that have higher rates of disease, then I think that bodes very well,” Fitzgerald said.
“But that’s information that we won’t have until we start to see more people vaccinated, and with 10 per cent vaccinated right now that’s not really something that we would even expect to see on a larger scale — the reduction in transmission.”
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.
