Provincial health officials say Ontario logged more than 2,900 new COVID-19 cases today and more than 3,000 on Sunday, driving the number of active infections above 25,000 for the first time in months.
According to Ontario’s ministry of health, 2,938 new cases were reported today and 3,041 infections were recorded on Sunday.
The number of infections confirmed over the past two days are in line with daily case counts reported earlier this weekend. The province reported 3,009 new cases on Saturday and 3,089 on Friday.
Approximately 36,600 tests were completed over the past 24 hours and nearly 46,400 tests were processed one day prior. According to the province, today’s positivity rate is 7.8 per cent, the highest it has been since January 12.
The rolling seven-day average of new cases is now 2,758, up from 2,094 just one week ago.
Another 22 virus-related deaths were confirmed in Ontario over the past two days, bringing the total number of deaths in the province to 7,450. The average daily death toll is up week-over-week, from 14 last Monday to 16 today.
Intensive care admissions continue to reach alarming levels, with a record 494 COVID-19 patients currently in ICUs across Ontario, according to the latest numbers from the province.
Of those patients in intensive care, 469 are testing positive for COVID-19, the province says, while the other 25 were admitted due to the virus but are no longer testing positive.
According to information released by local public health units, there are at least 1,232 people with COVID-19 receiving treatment in Ontario hospitals.
The number of known active COVID-19 cases in Ontario is now 25,487, up from 18,965 one week ago.
Of the new cases reported today, 906 are in Toronto, 533 are in Peel Region, 391 are in York Region, 230 are in Ottawa, and 140 are in Durham Region.
Province’s shutdown won’t lead to ‘significant improvement’ in hot spots
Ontario is entering its first full week of the Ford government’s provincewide shutdown, halting in-person dining in all regions and closing gyms and other businesses, with the exception of retail stores, for at least a month.
Some experts have been critical of the new measures, suggesting that they do not go far enough to address the situation in some of the province’s COVID-19 hot spots, including Toronto and Peel Region.
“When you look at where transmission is occurring and you look at the measures that were in place before this announcement was made and then you look at what measures are here now, nothing really changes in many of the high-burden areas… Toronto and Peel have over a thousand new cases per day combined and they moved from grey zone into grey zone,” Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist and member of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine task force, told CP24 on Monday morning.
“Things are even a little bit more permissive than they were a while ago so I just don’t think we can expect significant improvement, if any, especially in these hot spots in Toronto and Peel and other places that were already in the grey zone. I don’t think it would come to anyone’s surprise if we continue to see cases climb.”
The more transmissible variants of concern propelled Ontario into a third wave of the pandemic last month and to date, 2,135 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom, have been confirmed by provincial labs. More than 26,000 cases in Ontario have screened positive for a variant of concern but the lineage has not yet been determined through a lengthy process known as whole genome sequencing. The B.1.1.7 variant is believed to be the dominant strain for all new COVID-19 cases in Ontario.
More than 2.5 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine have now been administered in the province, which began Phase 2 of the Ford government’s vaccination rollout plan at the beginning of the month.
The numbers used in this story are found in the Ontario Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from what is reported by the province, because local units report figures at different times.
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.
