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Ontario reports dip in new COVID-19 case numbers due to technical issue – CTV Toronto
TORONTO —
Ontario is reporting a dip in the number of new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, but government officials say that a technical error resulted in an underestimated count today and an overestimated count yesterday.
The province issued a statement outlining the error, explaining that the record-breaking 1,589 new cases reported on Monday was overestimated and the 1,009 new cases reported today are underestimated.
Due to the technical issue, Monday’s report included cases registered up until 8 p.m. on Nov. 22 instead of up until 12 p.m. as usual, which led to the two-day error, the province said.
Health officials have not confirmed how many cases should not have been included in Monday’s total and added to today’s total instead. When averaging out new infections reported on both days, Ontario saw 1,299 cases.
The province also reported on Tuesday that 14 more people have died due to COVID-19. The day before, the province reported 19 more deaths.
Seniors continue to be the age group hardest hit by the pandemic. According to the province’s epidemiology report, 10 of the 14 deaths recorded on Tuesday were people living in long-term care homes.
Since the pandemic started in January, of the 3,519 people who have died in Ontario due to the disease and 2,441 were over the age of 80.
Provincial health officials deemed 1,082 more cases to be resolved as of Tuesday, bringing the total number of recovered patients in Ontario to 90,074.
The total number of lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario now stands at 106,510, including deaths and recoveries.
There are at least 534 people currently in Ontario hospitals due to COVID-19 and 159 of those patients are in an intensive care unit. Ninety-one of them are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.
The province previously stated that once the number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU reaches 150, it becomes harder to support medical needs not related to the disease in hospitals. Furthermore, once 350 COVID-19 patients are in the ICU, it becomes “impossible” to handle other medical needs, the province said.
Where are the COVID-19 cases in Ontario?
Of the 1,009 cases reported on Tuesday, health officials say that 497 were in Toronto, 175 were in Peel Region and 118 were in York Region. Officials say these numbers may be underestimated due to the technical error.
Toronto and Peel Region entered the province’s lockdown phase on Monday, which is the final category in the province’s COVID-19 tiered framework that guides restrictions.
Most non-essential businesses, including gyms, malls and personal care services, will have to shutter in the two COVID-19 hot spots for at least 28 days.
Several other regions in Ontario reported COVID-19 cases numbers in the double digits.
Waterloo reported 40 new cases, Windsor-Essex reported 31 new cases, Simcoe-Muskoka reported 25 new cases, Ottawa and Niagara Region reported 19 new cases, Durham Region reported 16 new cases and Hamilton reported 10 new cases.
Most of the new cases of COVID-19 reported on Tuesday involve people under the age of 80.
There were 354 infections in people between the ages of 20 and 39, at least 307 in people between the ages of 40 and 59 and 130 in people between the ages of 60 and 79. There were 163 cases in people under the age of 19.
COVID-19 testing in Ontario
Officials processed 27,053 COVID-19 tests in the last 24 hours. The ministry of health said the province’s positivity rate now stands at about 5.8 per cent when including duplicate tests and errors.
There are 29,316 COVID-19 tests still under investigation.
In total, Ontario has processed more than 5.9 million tests since the pandemic began in January
Tesla has promised to start selling cheaper models next year, days after a Reuters report revealed that the company had shelved its plans for an all-new Tesla that would cost only $25,000.
The news that Tesla was scrapping the Model 2 came amid a drop in sales and profits, and a decision to slash a tenth of the company’s global workforce. Reuters also noted increased competition from Chinese EV makers.
Tesla’s deliveries slumped in the first quarter for the first annual drop since the start of the pandemic in 2020, missing analyst forecasts by a mile in a sign that even price cuts haven’t been able to stave off an increasingly heated competition on the EV market.
Profits dropped by 50%, disappointing investors and leading to a slump in the company’s share prices, which made any good news urgently needed. Tesla delivered: it said it would bring forward the date for the release of new, lower-cost models. These would be produced on its existing platform and rolled out in the second half of 2025, per the BBC.
Reuters cited the company as warning that this change of plans could “result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected,” however. This suggests the price tag of the new models is unlikely to be as small as the $25,000 promised for the Model 2.
The decision is based on a substantially reduced risk appetite in Tesla’s management, likely affected by the recent financial results and the intensifying competition with Chinese EV makers. Shelving the Model 2 and opting instead for cars to be produced on existing manufacturing lines is the safer move in these “uncertain times”, per the company.
Tesla is also cutting prices, as many other EV makers are doing amid a palpable decline in sales in key markets such as Europe, where the phaseout of subsidies has hit demand for EVs seriously. The cut is of about $2,000 on all models that Tesla currently sells.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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Divisions within the Bank of Canada over the timing of a much-anticipated cut to its key overnight interest rate stem from concerns of some members of the central bank’s governing council that progress on taming inflation could stall in the face of stronger domestic demand — or even pick up again in the event of “new surprises.”
“Some members emphasized that, with the economy performing well, the risk had diminished that restrictive monetary policy would slow the economy more than necessary to return inflation to target,” according to a summary of deliberations for the April 10 rate decision that were published Wednesday. “They felt more reassurance was needed to reduce the risk that the downward progress on core inflation would stall, and to avoid jeopardizing the progress made thus far.”
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Others argued that there were additional risks from keeping monetary policy too tight in light of progress already made to tame inflation, which had come down “significantly” across most goods and services.
Some pointed out that the distribution of inflation rates across components of the consumer price index had approached normal, despite outsized price increases and decreases in certain components.
“Coupled with indicators that the economy was in excess supply and with a base case projection showing the output gap starting to close only next year, they felt there was a risk of keeping monetary policy more restrictive than needed.”
In the end, though, the central bankers agreed to hold the rate at five per cent because inflation remained too high and there were still upside risks to the outlook, albeit “less acute” than in the past couple of years.
Despite the “diversity of views” about when conditions will warrant cutting the interest rate, central bank officials agreed that monetary policy easing would probably be gradual, given risks to the outlook and the slow path for returning inflation to target, according to the summary of deliberations.
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They considered a number of potential risks to the outlook for economic growth and inflation, including housing and immigration, according to summary of deliberations.
The central bankers discussed the risk that housing market activity could accelerate and further boost shelter prices and acknowledged that easing monetary policy could increase the likelihood of this risk materializing. They concluded that their focus on measures such as CPI-trim, which strips out extreme movements in price changes, allowed them to effectively look through mortgage interest costs while capturing other shelter prices such as rent that are more reflective of supply and demand in housing.
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They also agreed to keep a close eye on immigration in the coming quarters due to uncertainty around recent announcements by the federal government.
“The projection incorporated continued strong population growth in the first half of 2024 followed by much softer growth, in line with the federal government’s target for reducing the share of non-permanent residents,” the summary said. “But details of how these plans will be implemented had not been announced. Governing council recognized that there was some uncertainty about future population growth and agreed it would be important to update the population forecast each quarter.”
• Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com
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Shares in US tech giant Meta have sunk in US after-hours trading despite better-than-expected earnings.
The Facebook and Instagram owner said expenses would be higher this year as it spends heavily on artificial intelligence (AI).
Its shares fell more than 15% after it said it expected to spend billions of dollars more than it had previously predicted in 2024.
Meta has been updating its ad-buying products with AI tools to boost earnings growth.
It has also been introducing more AI features on its social media platforms such as chat assistants.
The firm said it now expected to spend between $35bn and $40bn, (£28bn-32bn) in 2024, up from an earlier prediction of $30-$37bn.
Its shares fell despite it beating expectations on its earnings.
First quarter revenue rose 27% to $36.46bn, while analysts had expected earnings of $36.16bn.
Sophie Lund-Yates, lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said its spending plans were “aggressive”.
She said Meta’s “substantial investment” in AI has helped it get people to spend time on its platforms, so advertisers are willing to spend more money “in a time when digital advertising uncertainty remains rife”.
More than 50 countries are due to have elections this year, she said, “which hugely increases uncertainty” and can spook advertisers.
She added that Meta’s “fortunes are probably also being bolstered by TikTok’s uncertain future in the US”.
Meta’s rival has said it will fight an “unconstitutional” law that could result in TikTok being sold or banned in the US.
President Biden has signed into law a bill which gives the social media platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to sell off the app or it will be blocked in the US.
Ms Lund-Yates said that “looking further ahead, the biggest risk [for Meta] remains regulatory”.
Last year, Meta was fined €1.2bn (£1bn) by Ireland’s data authorities for mishandling people’s data when transferring it between Europe and the US.
And in February of this year, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced blistering criticism from US lawmakers and was pushed to apologise to families of victims of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Lund-Yates added that the firm has “more than enough resources to throw at legal challenges, but that doesn’t rule out the risks of ups and downs in market sentiment”.
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