Ontario’s cabinet is being urged to declare another state of emergency as it seeks to address surging numbers of COVID-19 cases in the province, sources say.
Health officials have recommended the following restrictions to cabinet, sources told CBC Toronto on Monday:
Gathering limits reduced to as few as five people.
Shorter hours for essential businesses, which would involve earlier closures and later openings.
Limits on construction activity, but those limits would still allow essential construction to continue. Essential construction would be defined as work on health care and critical infrastructure, as well as residential buildings.
A requirement that no employees would be allowed in offices unless they are deemed essential.
Those proposals, which have not yet been decided upon, come as Ontario reported another 3,338 cases of COVID-19 and the province’s death toll topped 5,000 on Monday.
Also on Monday, a government source told CBC News that a curfew will not be among restrictions expected to be announced.
The idea of a curfew, similar to the one recently implemented in Quebec, was floated as a possibility for Ontario as infections continue to surge. Premier Doug Ford said last week that revised COVID-19 forecasts show current measures are not doing enough to slow transmission of the novel coronavirus.
At a news conference Monday afternoon, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, associate chief medical officer of health, said it is “her understanding” that a curfew was not recommended by the province’s health table.
Sources told CBC News the updated modelling, set to be detailed at an 11:30 a.m. briefing tomorrow, projects the province’s intensive care units will be filled beyond capacity by early February. It also forecasts that Ontario is on track to see up to 6,000 new cases per day by the end of this month.
Yaffe said Monday that “urgent action” is necessary in Ontario — something the premier first started talking about late last week.
“Unfortunately, I’m not able to give you any good news today,” Yaffe said.
“The number of people who have lost their lives remains unbearably high.”
Ford has repeatedly said that “nothing is off the table” but has offered no specifics about what new restrictions could be coming. In a brief statement this morning, Ford said his cabinet will meet later today, with an announcement expected after the modelling has been released publicly.
“We do believe, that based on the data that you will see tomorrow … that we are in a serious situation and serious measures need to be [undertaken],” Yaffe said.
Meanwhile, Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of the federal government’s Immunity Task Force, told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics that Ontario’s only choice now is to further batten down the hatches.
“We have to go back to where we were in the spring,” he told host Vassy Kapelos Monday evening. “Whether we can get compliance at that level … is questionable but right now, much as I hate to endorse it because it’s so hard on people and its hard on people differentially, we’re going to have to really try to shut things down to the greatest extent possible in the provinces like Ontario that are hard hit.”
Naylor says the problem was that in the fall Ontario let the case counts get too high, and tracking and tracing failed. The only way to get a grip on the situation now is to keep kids out of school, non-essential businesses closed and contact between people to a minimum.
“I don’t see any way around some really tough measures right now,” he said.
WATCH |Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of the federal government’s Immunity Task Force, speaks to Power & Politics host Vassy Kapelos:
Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of the federal government’s Immunity Task Force on what Ontario needs to do now. 1:20
The newest confirmed cases include 931 in Toronto, 531 in Peel Region, 241 in York Region, 168 in Niagara Region and 165 in Waterloo Region.
Other public health units that saw double- or triple-digit increases were:
Ottawa: 159
Hamilton: 146
Durham Region: 143
Middlesex-London: 141
Windsor-Essex: 118
Lambton: 90
Simcoe-Muskoka: 84
Halton Region: 81
Southwestern: 81
Eastern Ontario: 69
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 56
Huron-Perth: 27
Chatham-Kent: 21
Brant County: 14
Sudbury: 11
(Note: All of the figures used in this story are found on the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard or in its Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any region may differ from what is reported by the local public health unit, because local units report figures at different times.)
Combined, the additional cases bring the seven-day average of new daily cases to a record high 3,555.
There are now 30,632 confirmed, actives cases of COVID-19 provincewide.
The number of patients with COVID-19 in hospitals climbed to 1,563, 80 more admissions than yesterday. Of those, 387 are being treated in intensive care and 268 require a ventilator to breathe, a new pandemic high in the province.
Notably, Critical Care Services Ontario, which produces an internal report on ICU admissions and capacity each morning, puts Ontario’s current ICU figure at 409, according to Anthony Dale, president of the Ontario Hospital Association.
Ontario’s network of labs processed 46,403 test samples for the novel coronavirus and reported a test positivity rate of 7.7 per cent. Another 28,774 tests are in the queue to be completed.
The 29 additional deaths in today’s update bring Ontario’s official toll to 5,012. The first COVID-19-linked death was reported on March 19, 2020.
The province says it administered 8,859 more doses of COVID-19 vaccines yesterday. As of 8 p.m. Sunday, a total of 122,105 doses have been given in Ontario.
Meanwhile, elementary and secondary school students across northern Ontario returned to in-class learning this morning.
The northern portion of the province is allowed to return to school buildings as positivity rates for COVID-19 in that region are relatively low.
All students began their winter term with online learning this month and the government announced last week that students in southern Ontario will continue attending classes remotely until at least Jan. 25.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced Saturday that the list of essential workers eligible for emergency child care would be expanded.
It now includes RCMP officers, custodial and clerical education workers and postal staff.
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
