MONTREAL —
Several residents at a Quebec long-term care home have tested positive for COVID-19 despite being among the first people in Canada to receive the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
Seven people at the Maimonides long-term care home in western Montreal “were infected within the first 28 days after their first [vaccine] dose,” the regional health-care authority that oversees the home said in a statement.
The outbreak doesn’t suggest anything new about the vaccine—it was already clear it doesn’t give full protection with a single dose, nor right away—but it is highlighting worries in Quebec, where people are already on edge about the province’s “off-label” vaccination campaign and the contradictory information around it.
Health authorities haven’t yet been able to determine exactly when in those 28 days they believe the residents were infected.
The extra immunity from the Pfizer vaccine doesn’t kick in until about 12 days after the first inoculation. In other words, if the residents were infected within two weeks of getting the shot, that’s no surprise, as they had no extra immunity during that time.
If they got it in the third or fourth weeks, it’s not a big surprise either, as Pfizer maintains the first dose on its own only provides 52 per cent protection. It’s the second dose, the booster shot, that bumps that number up to 95 per cent.
The situation points “to the desperate and immediate need for the second dose,” said Joyce Shanks, whose father lives at the home. Shanks heads a family advocacy group there.
A group of families at Maimonides had already threatened to sue the province over the delay of their booster shots, after the province decided at the end of December to redeploy the doses.
In a campaign to give partial protection to the greatest possible number of people, Quebec is now using those intended second doses as other people’s first doses.
The province hasn’t yet said when it will give second doses. A federal advisory committee said today that it recommended delaying second shots, but only up to an interval of 42 days after the first shot.
People who were vaccinated in the first few days of Maimonides’ vaccination drive are already more than a week overdue for their second shots, according to Pfizer’s schedule.
The Pfizer booster shot is supposed to be given 21 days after the first shot. The first Maimonides vaccinees’ booster-shot date was supposed to be last Monday, Jan. 4.
The seven new cases add urgency to the families’ worries, Shanks said, despite the fact that the cases were “not surprising,” she said.
“There have always been active cases and staff cases [at Maimonides],” she said. “There was never a belief that there would be no new cases… COVID was circulating in the building.”
Families are also well aware that the first dose only offers partial protection on its own, she said. She cited Pfizer’s data, which shows that the first dose offers 52.4 per cent protection.
“No one ever said there was a 100 per cent protection after the first dose,” she said.
In fact, however, some have said something close to this—namely, Quebec authorities and the province’s top medical advisors, who have repeatedly and publicly claimed that the first shot alone gives around 90 per cent protection, contrary to what Pfizer says.
Shanks said she believes the new infections did show up recently rather than in mid-December, meaning the people affected may have had some protection from the vaccine.
They showed up “this past week,” she said, and the home “had tested frequently.”
That still doesn’t confirm much, however, since people could have gotten the vaccines at any time since mid-December.
To date, 84 per cent of residents have been vaccinated and the shots are “ongoing,” said Carl Theriault, a spokesman for the west-central Montreal health authority, in a statement to CTV.
Regarding the new cases, “we are waiting for the results of a public health investigation to understand what happened,” said Theriault.
Positive cases don’t even necessarily mean the person has the virus, said one Montreal expert. After getting vaccinated, pieces of genetic material from the vaccine—not live virus—can be picked up by the “extremely sensitive” tests and lead to a positive test, said Dr. Mitch Shulman.
“Did they just get a piece of genetic material [and] that doesn’t mean that they’re infected at all?” Shulman said.
“The presence of RNA… in your nose doesn’t mean necessarily that you are sick, doesn’t mean necessarily that you’re infectious, doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
The other Quebec care home to begin vaccinations on the very first day, the St-Antoine home in Quebec City, had a major COVID-19 outbreak throughout December, with dozens infected, after the first round of vaccinations.
That all took place before the province announced it would be delaying the second dose, however, and it didn’t stoke the same questions.
“We expected to find cases among vaccinated workers and seniors, among others, since they received only one dose of the vaccine,” the province’s health department told CTV News in late December.
“The time it takes to develop antibodies in [vaccinated people] was not able to prevent COVID-19 among some residents or workers, as exposure to the virus had already occurred given the outbreak context.”
On Wednesday, Montreal’s top public health officer, Dr. Mylene Drouin, said the province is studying both outbreaks to see if it can learn anything about how elderly vaccine recipients responded to the vaccine—for example, when its immune protection kicked in.
In the Maimonides case, however, “it is too small a number to draw a conclusion,” said Drouin.
She said the Quebec Institute of Public Health is also looking into whether the positive cases are from a new variant of the virus.
“It may be one of the hypotheses, and the [Quebec public health institute’s] laboratories are going to look at this possibility,” said Drouin. “We had a couple of cases of the variant, but it was in a family.”
–With files from CTV’s Billy Shields and Daniel J. Rowe
TORONTO – Roots Corp. may have built its brand on all things comfy and cosy, but its CEO says activewear is now “really becoming a core part” of the brand.
The category, which at Roots spans leggings, tracksuits, sports bras and bike shorts, has seen such sustained double-digit growth that Meghan Roach plans to make it a key part of the business’ future.
“It’s an area … you will see us continue to expand upon,” she told analysts on a Friday call.
The Toronto-based retailer’s push into activewear has taken shape over many years and included several turns as the official designer and supplier of Team Canada’s Olympic uniform.
But consumers have had plenty of choice when it comes to workout gear and other apparel suited to their sporting needs. On top of the slew of athletic brands like Nike and Adidas, shoppers have also gravitated toward Lululemon Athletica Inc., Alo and Vuori, ramping up competition in the activewear category.
Roach feels Roots’ toehold in the category stems from the fit, feel and following its merchandise has cultivated.
“Our product really resonates with (shoppers) because you can wear it through multiple different use cases and occasions,” she said.
“We’ve been seeing customers come back again and again for some of these core products in our activewear collection.”
Her remarks came the same day as Roots revealed it lost $5.2 million in its latest quarter compared with a loss of $5.3 million in the same quarter last year.
The company said the second-quarter loss amounted to 13 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Aug. 3, the same as a year earlier.
In presenting the results, Roach reminded analysts that the first half of the year is usually “seasonally small,” representing just 30 per cent of the company’s annual sales.
Sales for the second quarter totalled $47.7 million, down from $49.4 million in the same quarter last year.
The move lower came as direct-to-consumer sales amounted to $36.4 million, down from $37.1 million a year earlier, as comparable sales edged down 0.2 per cent.
The numbers reflect the fact that Roots continued to grapple with inventory challenges in the company’s Cooper fleece line that first cropped up in its previous quarter.
Roots recently began to use artificial intelligence to assist with daily inventory replenishments and said more tools helping with allocation will go live in the next quarter.
Beyond that time period, the company intends to keep exploring AI and renovate more of its stores.
It will also re-evaluate its design ranks.
Roots announced Friday that chief product officer Karuna Scheinfeld has stepped down.
Rather than fill the role, the company plans to hire senior level design talent with international experience in the outdoor and activewear sectors who will take on tasks previously done by the chief product officer.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Mediated talks between the union representing HandyDART workers in Metro Vancouver and its employer, Transdev, are set to resume today as a strike that has stopped most services drags into a second week.
No timeline has been set for the length of the negotiations, but Joe McCann, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1724, says they are willing to stay there as long as it takes, even if talks drag on all night.
About 600 employees of the door-to-door transit service for people unable to navigate the conventional transit system have been on strike since last Tuesday, pausing service for all but essential medical trips.
Hundreds of drivers rallied outside TransLink’s head office earlier this week, calling for the transportation provider to intervene in the dispute with Transdev, which was contracted to oversee HandyDART service.
Transdev said earlier this week that it will provide a reply to the union’s latest proposal on Thursday.
A statement from the company said it “strongly believes” that their employees deserve fair wages, and that a fair contract “must balance the needs of their employees, clients and taxpayers.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
