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Sorry to burst your COVID-19 'social bubble' but even small gatherings are getting riskier – CBC.ca

Published

4 years ago

September 18, 2020

For months, Canadians have been bubbling up with other friends and family to socialize safely during the pandemic.

But with COVID-19 case counts rising in many communities, kids back in schools and more people returning to work, many public health experts agree that what worked as a safe approach in the early days of the lockdown now comes with more risk.

“I honestly think with the return to school right now, most people’s bubbles have burst,” says epidemiologist Ashleigh Tuite. “You’re talking about large numbers of connections.”

In Ontario, “social circles” allow you to see up to 10 people without the usual pandemic precautions in place as long as all of those family members, friends or neighbours make a pact to socialize only with each other, while in Alberta, the cap for your “cohort” is your household plus up to 15 other people.

In B.C., the guidelines for a “bubble” are a little looser. Officials say the members of your immediate household can be “carefully expanded” to include outsiders, with the goal of limiting the number as much as possible — since these are people you’re allowed to kiss, hug, chat with and dine with, without masks or distancing.

It’s a concept being adopted in several countries around the world. And while it works well in principle, experts warn it may be harder to maintain at this point in the pandemic.

Bubble makes sense in ‘theory’

“As a theory, the bubble makes a lot of sense,” said Dr. Dominik Mertz, an associate professor in the division of infectious diseases at Hamilton’s McMaster University. “But there’s a lot of confusion from people over what it is.”

He also added it can be tough to do safely, particularly if the bubble involves multiple households “who all have different risks.”

Say you have two four-person households socializing without the usual pandemic precautions. On paper, it follows the Ontario and B.C. guidelines.

But what if one person is back at work, leaving them exposed to dozens of colleagues? Or either family’s children are in school, where physical distancing and mask wearing might be a challenge?

A small sphere of contacts can quickly expand to include everyone that each family member comes in contact with, which means the bubbling approach really isn’t “useful” anymore, according to Tuite, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

‘It’s not going to work for all people’

Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa, agreed it’s not a “perfect model” at this point in the pandemic.

“It would’ve worked better back when things were fully locked down,” he said, adding there’s still merit in bubbling with a few close friends or family if everyone is cautious.

“I don’t want to remove any tools from the table,” he said. “If bubbling is working for some people, keep on doing it. But it’s not going to work for all people.”

For instance, a supply teacher, with a social network of students and staff in various classrooms or even buildings, can’t realistically have a social bubble without any precautions, Deonandan said, while someone working from home might be able to do it more safely.

WATCH | ‘Exponential’ growth in new cases in parts of Canada, says infectious disease specialist:

Parts of Canada are seeing ‘exponential’ growth in COVID-19 cases with Ontario headed toward a thousand new cases per day, says infectious disease specialist Dr. Michael Gardam. 0:58

For many people, losing their bubble could mean a long, lonely winter, made worse by mental health struggles or living alone.

“We know there are benefits to having that human contact,” said Dr. Nitin Mohan, a physician epidemiologist and assistant professor at Western University in London, Ont.

But when dropping temperatures push people indoors, where transmission risk is higher, and families start making plans to gather over the upcoming stretch of holidays, it could make adhering to the bubble principles even tougher.

Bubble burst? Isolate for a while

Mertz says Canadians should already be planning for upcoming gatherings like Thanksgiving.

If outside-the-bubble family members want to celebrate together, find ways to do it safely, he says, by meeting outdoors and staying apart as much as possible. Otherwise, you’re blending several household bubbles together and upping the risk for everyone.

And if you do throw caution to the wind for a turkey feast, there’s another approach: Isolate yourself as much as possible for two weeks after the gathering.

“That would give us downtime, so in case someone got infected, you are not spreading it from that gathering into each individual bubble,” Mertz said.

The various experts who spoke with CBC News acknowledged the challenges in sticking to even the safest bubbling plan, with peer pressure, slip-ups, and our innate desire for human connection all potential obstacles.

For that reason, Dr. Andrew Morris, an infectious disease specialist with the Sinai Health System and University Health Network in Toronto, stresses the onus shouldn’t just be on individuals to reduce transmission.

From a system-wide perspective, he says, provincial governments need to ensure every piece of the pandemic plan is adequately resourced: testing capacity, contact tracing, personal protective equipment and hospital staff.

“If you can’t test people who are symptomatic, then you can’t contact trace … and you can’t identify people who are about to become symptomatic and are unknowingly and unwittingly spreading the disease,” he said.

Ontario gathering sizes reduced

Ontario officials say they’re working to increase testing capacity amid hours-long lineups in multiple cities, including Ottawa and Toronto.

The province is also lowering the maximum size limit for private gatherings — things like backyard barbecues or dinner parties, with precautions in place among people in different social circles — in some regions.

The new limits will be 10 people indoors and 25 people outdoors, with hefty fines of $10,000 or more for organizers who flout the rules.

Deonandan calls that the “single best policy intervention” for controlling the spread of COVID-19, given the growing body of research showing large gatherings can be hot spots for virus transmission.

“Mask wearing, that’s important. Distancing, that’s important, too,” he said. “But time and time again we see explosions of cases in otherwise controlled areas … driven by these super-spreading events.”

Even smaller gatherings can fuel the virus’s spread, like infections after a family outing documented in Toronto, and a 10-person cottage trip — which would still meet the province’s new rules — that led to 40 new cases in Ottawa.

It’s not clear if anyone involved in those gatherings was bubbling together, and Mertz stresses in all situations, the same safety precautions apply.

“Whether you continue with the bubble concept or not, it comes down to the less people gathering, the more time you can spend outside, the more you can spread out — the lower the risk.”

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House of Commons committee looks to recall Tom Clark about New York City condo

Published

16 mins ago

November 5, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Members of Parliament studying the federal government’s decision to buy a $9-million luxury condo in Manhattan are preparing to recall Canada’s consul general in New York to answer more questions about his involvement in the purchase.

The Conservatives put forward a motion on Tuesday to have Tom Clark return to the House operations committee. The move was supported by other opposition parties after new information emerged that contradicted his previous testimony.

Clark told the committee in September he had no role whatsoever in the purchase of the new condo, or the sale of the previous residence.

But reporting from Politico on Tuesday indicated Clark raised concerns about the old unit two months after he was appointed to his role as Canada’s representative in New York.

Politico cited documents obtained through access-to-information, which were then shared with other media by the Conservative party.

A May 2023 report from Global Affairs Canada indicates Clark informed government officials the residence needed to be replaced.

“The current (consul general in New York, head of mission) expressed concerns regarding the completion of the … kitchen and refurbishment project and indicated the unit was not suitable to be the (consul general’s) accommodations,” the report reads.

“It does not have an ideal floor plan for (consul general in New York) representational activities.”

The final call on whether Clark will face further questions has not been made, however, because the committee adjourned before the motion went to a vote. The committee’s next meeting is next week.

Tuesday’s meeting featured Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly as a witness, and she faced questions about Clark’s involvement in the purchase.

“This was not a political decision because this was an operational decision,” Joly told the committee in a testy exchange with Conservative MP Michael Barrett.

“(The committee) had numerous people, officials of mine, that came to see you and said that. So, these are the facts.”

Joly later told the committee she only learned of the decision to purchase a new residence through media reports, even though her chief of staff was notified weeks earlier.

“The department informed my chief of staff once the decision was taken. Because, of course, it was not a political decision,” Joly said.

Shortly before Joly was excused, Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie put forward the motion to recall Clark for two more hours to answer more questions.

Bloc MP Julie Vignola proposed instead to have him testify for only one hour — indicating she would support the motion with that change.

“One hour is more than enough to know whether he lied to us,” Vignola told her colleagues in French.

NDP MP Taylor Bachrach also said he would support the move, given the contrast between the new report and Clark’s testimony about whether he spoke to anyone about a desire to move into a new residence.

“What really irks me is the consul general was so clear in response to repeated questioning at committee,” Bachrach said.

“Mr. Clark said, ‘Never.’ One-word answer, ‘Never.’ You can’t get more unequivocal than that.”

The Liberal government has argued that buying the new residence will save Canadians taxpayers millions of dollars and reduce ongoing maintenance costs and property taxes while supporting future program needs for the consul general.

The former official residence is listed for sale at $13 million, but has yet to be sold.

In her remarks Tuesday, Joly told the committee other like-minded countries have paid more for their Manhattan residences than Canada has — including $11 million for the U.K., and France’s $19 million purchase in 2015.

Joly said among the countries that have residences in New York, only Afghanistan and Bangladesh were not located in Manhattan.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.

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Proposed $32.5B tobacco deal not ‘doomed to fail,’ judge says in ruling

Published

31 mins ago

November 5, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – An Ontario judge says any outstanding issues regarding a proposed $32.5 billion settlement between three major tobacco companies and their creditors should be solvable in the coming months.

Ontario Superior Court Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz has released his reasons for approving a motion last week to have representatives for creditors review and vote on the proposal in December.

One of the companies, JTI-Macdonald Corp., said last week it objects to the plan in its current form and asked the court to postpone scheduling the vote until several issues were resolved.

The other two companies, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., didn’t oppose the motion but said they retained the right to contest the proposed plan down the line.

The proposal announced last month includes $24 billion for provinces and territories seeking to recover smoking-related health-care costs and about $6 billion for smokers across Canada and their loved ones.

If the proposed deal is accepted by a majority of creditors, it will then move on to the next step: a hearing to obtain the approval of the court, tentatively scheduled for early next year.

In a written decision released Monday, Morawetz said it was clear that not all issues had been resolved at this stage of the proceedings.

He pointed to “outstanding issues” between the companies regarding their respective shares of the total payout, as well as debate over the creditor status of one of JTI-Macdonald’s affiliate companies.

In order to have creditors vote on a proposal, the court must be satisfied the plan isn’t “doomed to fail” either at the creditors or court approval stages, court heard last week.

Lawyers representing plaintiffs in two Quebec class actions, those representing smokers in the rest of Canada, and 10 out of 13 provinces and territories have expressed their support for the proposal, the judge wrote in his ruling.

While JTI-Macdonald said its concerns have not been addressed, the company’s lawyer “acknowledged that the issues were solvable,” Morawetz wrote.

“At this stage, I am unable to conclude that the plans are doomed to fail,” he said.

“There are a number of outstanding issues as between the parties, but there are no issues that, in my view, cannot be solved,” he said.

The proposed settlement is the culmination of more than five years of negotiations in what Morawetz has called one of “the most complex insolvency proceedings in Canadian history.”

The companies sought creditor protection in Ontario in 2019 after Quebec’s top court upheld a landmark ruling ordering them to pay about $15 billion to plaintiffs in two class-action lawsuits.

All legal proceedings against the companies, including lawsuits filed by provincial governments, have been paused during the negotiations. That order has now been extended until the end of January 2025.

In total, the companies faced claims of more than $1 trillion, court documents show.

In October of last year, the court instructed the mediator in the case, former Chief Justice of Ontario Warren Winkler, and the monitors appointed to each company to develop a proposed plan for a global settlement, with input from the companies and creditors.

A year later, they proposed a plan that would involve upfront payments as well as annual ones based on the companies’ net after-tax income and any tax refunds, court documents show.

The monitors estimate it would take the companies about 20 years to pay the entire amount, the documents show.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.

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Potato wart: Appeal Court rejects P.E.I. Potato Board’s bid to overturn ruling

Published

39 mins ago

November 5, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a bid by the Prince Edward Island Potato Board to overturn a 2021 decision by the federal agriculture minister to declare the entire province as “a place infested with potato wart.”

That order prohibited the export of seed potatoes from the Island to prevent the spread of the soil-borne fungus, which deforms potatoes and makes them impossible to sell.

The board had argued in Federal Court that the decision was unreasonable because there was insufficient evidence to establish that P.E.I. was infested with the fungus.

In April 2023, the Federal Court dismissed the board’s application for a judicial review, saying the order was reasonable because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said regulatory measures had failed to prevent the transmission of potato wart to unregulated fields.

On Tuesday, the Appeal Court dismissed the board’s appeal, saying the lower court had selected the correct reasonableness standard to review the minister’s order.

As well, it found the lower court was correct in accepting the minister’s view that the province was “infested” because the department had detected potato wart on 35 occasions in P.E.I.’s three counties since 2000.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.

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