Shoppers Drug Mart, Rexall, Loblaws and Costco are among the pharmacy chains participating in the rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in three regions of Ontario this week, Premier Doug Ford announced Wednesday.
As part of a new pilot program, 325 pharmacies in Toronto, Windsor-Essex, and Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington, are offering COVID-19 vaccination appointments to Ontarians born between between January 1, 1957 and December 31, 1961. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Ford said some of those pharmacies had already started administering vaccines as of this morning.
Both big chains and smaller independent pharmacies have been included in the pilot, the premier said.
For a full list of participating pharmacies follow this link
Although people between the ages of 60 and 64 are not being prioritized during Phase One of province’s vaccination program, the AstraZeneca doses are being made available to people in that age group based on the advice of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.
The committee said the AstraZeneca vaccine is not recommended for people ages 65 and older due to “limited information on the efficacy of this vaccine in this age group.”
The 194,000 AstraZeneca doses that Ontario has now received are set to expire on April 2 and the pilot program will help ensure vaccine doses are delivered as “quickly and efficiently” as possible, Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said this week.
Vaccines will go to doctors’ offices in other regions
This weekend, AstraZeneca doses will also be delivered to primary care settings, including physician offices, in Hamilton, Peel Region, Simcoe-Muskoka, Peterborough, Guelph, and Toronto, Ford said.
Primary care providers in those areas will not be taking appointments by request but will be reaching out to eligible patients.
Retired Gen. Rick Hiller, who is leading Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution task force, acknowledged Wednesday that the first shipment of AstraZeneca vaccine doses won’t come anywhere close to vaccinating everyone in that age group across the province.
“Our first allocation of AstraZeneca is 194,000. In that age group of 60 to 64 across Ontario there are one million people so clearly we don’t nearly have enough vaccines to do all of that age group in this first batch,” he said at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.
“We are not sure of the next arrivals of AstraZeneca but you can be sure as soon as we get them, as soon as we know, we will publicize that and we will move it to our logistics pipeline and get it to pharmacies and family doctors and carry on along that same age group until we have finished all of those who are eligible and who want to have the vaccine.”
The province is currently in Phase One of its vaccination program, which prioritizes health-care workers at the highest risk of infection and people over the age of 80 for a shot.
To date, Ontario has administered just 943,533 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine but the Ontario government has said it hopes to inoculate another one million people in the month of March.
During Phase Two of its vaccine program, which is set to run from April to July, the province has said it plans to offer doses to nine million more Ontarians.
The Ontario government plans to ramp up inoculations next week when it launches its online appointment booking portal on Monday. Officials say more than 120 mass immunization clinics are scheduled to open this month and many areas, including the regions of Peel and York, have already opened mass vaccination sites to begin inoculating people over the age of 80.
Toronto plans to open its first three mass immunizations clinics on March 17.
Speaking to CP24 on Wednesday morning, Mayor John Tory called the province’s pharmacy rollout “a great step forward.”
“I think people should understand that as supply has increased, the different kinds of places we are going to be able to administer the vaccine have been increasing as well,” he said.
A group of hospitals in Toronto have launched their own booking portal and have already begun inoculating people over the age of 80.
Vaccines are currently only available at select pharmacies in Toronto, Windsor-Essex, and Kingston but the premier said Wednesday that as more supply become available, additional pharmacies will come online and begin to offer COVID-19 vaccines to the general public.
Ford said while not all of the province’s 4,900 pharmacies will be involved in the vaccine rollout, “the vast majority will.”
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.
