There may be many different paths to the new COVID-19 “normal” as provinces announce various plans to gradually ease social restrictions across Canada.
But all of them share one critical requirement: the ability to test widely for infection and then trace contacts, in order to isolate people who were exposed and break the chains of infection.
Are we ready? Has Canada fixed the testing backlogs and shortages that made headlines just a few weeks ago?
Infectious disease experts on the front line of Canada’s COVID-19 outbreak say no, but it’s a question that doesn’t have an easy answer.
‘Easy to say, hard to do’
Each province is responsible for its own testing policy, and in many cases individual municipal or regional health units are responsible for contact tracing.
“I personally am concerned about testing and tracing capacity,” said Dr. David Naylor, who was appointed to the leadership committee of the newly established COVID-19 Immunity Task Force announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last Thursday.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital, agrees.
“We’re not in a position yet where we’re doing enough diagnostic tests to reopen,” said Bogoch. “The crucial elements of reopening will be no barriers to diagnostic testing, and then we need an army of people to do contact tracing so we can identify positive cases and their close contacts,” he said on CBC News Network on Sunday.
“Easy to say, hard to do.”
If Canadians lack confidence in the testing system, it’s understandable.
In the first days of Canada’s outbreak many were shocked to learn that they could not get tested even though they had both symptoms and a travel history.
Soon after, Ontario, B.C. and several other provinces reported backlogs that forced some people to wait more than a week for test results.
Among the criteria for lifting Ontario’s COVID-19 restrictions are a consistent two- to four-week drop in new infections, a drop in infections traceable to a source, and the ability to trace 90% of new case contacts within 24 hours. (Government of Ontario)
Even after the testing chaos prompted Ontario’s frustrated premier to warn he would accept “no more excuses,” Ontario still hasn’t reached the level of testing promised almost six weeks ago.
In March, Ontario officials said they would be testing 20,000 people by mid-April. But for the past seven days the province has only done 12,500 tests per day, with a target of 14,000 tests per day by the end of this week.
British Columbia is only testing about 2,000 people per day, according to Dr. Bonnie Henry, the province’s chief medical officer of health.
“Partly that is because we are not seeing a lot of respiratory illness in the community right now,” said Henry. “We’re continuing to test anybody who goes to hospital with a respiratory illness or any other symptoms that we’re concerned about, and we have very broad symptoms that we’re talking about for the community.”
Canada’s Health Minister Patty Hajdu was asked about Canada’s COVID-19 testing capacity during a media briefing on Monday.
“I think, obviously, Canada can do better,” she said. “We’ve done a lot, and we’re very happy with the growth of testing that’s happening in the capacity of provinces and territories.”
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Hajdu added that the federal government has contracted a New Brunswick company to supply some of the desperately needed reagents — particular chemicals needed to conduct the tests.
“Now we have a local manufacturing source for that reagent, which is making it a lot easier to get that component of the testing done.”
LuminUltra is to supply the federal government with 500,000 RNA/DNA isolation kits per week.
CEO Patrick Whalen said the company will have shipped one million test kits to provincial labs by Thursday.
“We are providing this RNA isolation kit that is optimized to function on a specific extraction device, a robotics device that processes 96 samples at a time,” said Whalen, adding it’s designed to work on equipment that is commonly used in provincial health labs across Canada.
But there are other chemicals needed at different stages of the test, and the supply of those chemicals is also strained.
“We are ramping up our ability to produce the assay kits, as well — the step that comes after the isolation process — but we have not been called upon or asked to produce those for the provincial health labs yet,” Whalen said.
What about the Spartan Cube?
Ottawa’s Spartan Biosciences has been applauded for its rapid DNA analyzer, the Spartan Cube, that has been adapted to do COVID-19 tests. Health Canada approved the test two weeks ago, but it’s still not clear whether the test has added any capacity to the system.
CEO Paul Lem said he could not reveal precisely how many of the portable DNA analyzing machines Spartan has shipped to the federal government or the provinces, citing the need to protect proprietary information.
“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you,” Lem said. “We want to keep that competitive intelligence away from our competitors.”
He would only say the company has shipped “close to 100 or more.”
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Each cube can perform one test per hour, which would be a maximum of 24 tests per day per machine. Lem said the company is shipping thousands of the tests that are designed to be used with the company’s tiny testing machine. But he couldn’t say whether they are being used yet.
“Good question, I don’t know,” said Lem.
Health Canada’s media office was unable to say how many Cubes have been purchased and received so far, or whether any of those Cubes is currently being used to do COVID-19 tests.
Who to test
One key question as social restrictions are eased will be determining who is tested.
As B.C.’s Henry noted, that province is testing anyone with symptoms.
“We need to have a broader understanding of where cases and clusters are coming up in our communities,” Henry said.
A bin full of disposable gloves at a drive-thru COVID-19 testing centres near Etobicoke General Hospital, in Toronto. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Henry said there is no point in testing people without symptoms unless they are within a specific outbreak, such as in prisons or long- term care settings.
Hospitals want to be able to test every patient who is admitted, not just people who have symptoms of COVID-19.
That’s one reason some front-line doctors are saying it’s too early to ease restrictions.
“It’s trying to find that balance between opening things up and not opening up too much because we’d have such a surge of cases, we’d go right back to the concern we had a month ago,” said Dr. Michael Gardam, chief of staff at Humber River Hospital in Toronto.
“It’s an unbelievably tricky balancing act to try to figure out the way forward,” he said. “To be blunt, it was so much easier to shut things down than it will be to open them up.”
Contact tracing
The other side of testing is the need for legions of contact tracers to track down everyone who was encountered by every person who tests positive. It’s a daunting undertaking.
“Contact tracing is really important,” said Henry. “It’s what helps us understand where people are that might have been exposed to the virus and maybe developing symptoms,” she said. “Because the incubation period is so long for COVID-19, that gives us the opportunity to find people and make sure they’re isolated before they can transmit to somebody else.”
B.C. has been building up its contact tracing capacity, Henry said.
“We’re looking at how we can use technology to facilitate that, but really there’s nothing out there that takes the place of having an individual connect with each of the contacts.”
The federal government put out a national call for COVID-19 volunteers that received almost 58,000 responses by the time it closed last Friday. The provincial and territorial governments can call upon those people as needed, said Andre Gagnon, a spokesperson for Health Canada.
But he said most of them won’t be working in contact tracing.
“The lists of volunteers have been shared with a number of jurisdictions, mostly to support long-term care. Each jurisdiction will be determining when and how they will be deploying volunteers.”
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.
Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission.
The FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter White House control, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in a way he doesn’t like.
Carr has of late embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “ Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Trump has claimed he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, but many of its themes have aligned with his statements.
Carr said in a statement congratulating Trump on his win that he believed “the FCC will have an important role to play reining in Big Tech, ensuring that broadcasters operate in the public interest, and unleashing economic growth.”
“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday. “He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
The five-person commission has a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year, when Trump gets to appoint a new member.
Also a prolific writer of op-eds, Carr wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal last month decrying an FCC decision to revoke a federal award for Elon Musk’s satellite service, Starlink. He said the move couldn’t be explained “by any objective application of the facts, the law or sound policy.”
“In my view, it amounted to nothing more than regulatory lawfare against one of the left’s top targets: Mr. Musk,” Carr wrote.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending his embattled carbon-pricing program on the world stage, and he argues that misinformation is threatening environmental progress. He spoke at a conference held by the anti-poverty group Global Citizen, ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Brazil, and said fighting climate change is not in conflict with affordability. (Nov. 17, 2024)
PROVO, Utah (AP) — Shortly after sunset on Saturday, Rabbi Chaim Zippel clasped an overflowing cup of wine and a tin of smelling spices as he marked the end of the Sabbath with a small Jewish congregation at his home near Provo, which doubles as the county’s only synagogue.
The conclusion of the ceremony known as Havdalah set off a mad dash to change into blue and white fan gear and drive to the football stadium at nearby Brigham Young University, the Utah private school run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Zippel never expected to become a BYU fan, or even a football follower, but that changed when the school where 98.5% of students belong to the faith known widely as the Mormon church added its first Jewish quarterback to the roster.
Retzlaff has earned a hero’s embrace by rabbis and others in Provo’s tiny but tight-knit Jewish community while also becoming a favorite of the broader BYU fan base that lovingly calls him the “BYJew.”
One of just three Jewish students in a student body of 35,000, the quarterback and team co-captain who worked his way into the starting lineup has used his newfound stardom to teach others about his own faith while taking steps to learn more about Judaism for himself.
“I came here thinking I might not fit in with the culture, so this will be a place where I can just focus on school and football,” Retzlaff told The Associated Press. “But I found that, in a way, I do fit. People are curious. And when everybody around you is so faith-oriented, it makes you want to explore your faith more.”
The junior college transfer from Corona, California, formed a fast friendship with the Utah rabbi when he came to BYU in 2023. The two began studying Judaism fundamentals each week in the campus library, which would help Retzlaff speak confidently about his faith in public and in his many required religion classes.
BYU undergraduates must take classes about the Book of Mormon, the gospel of Jesus Christ and the faith’s core belief that families can be together forever if marriages are performed in temples. Retzlaff said he was surprised to find many references to the Jewish people in the Book of Mormon. Some classmates and fans have even called him “the chosen one,” referring to both his success on the field and a Latter-day Saint belief that members of the Jewish faith are God’s chosen people.
“It’s a lot of respect, honestly. They’re putting me on a mantel sometimes, and I’m like, ‘Whoa guys, I don’t know about that,'” he said with a laugh.
Retzlaff, 21, has embraced becoming an ambassador for his faith in college football and in a state where only 0.2% of residents are Jewish. The redshirt junior wears a silver Star of David necklace on campus and attends dinners on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, at the rabbi’s house during the offseason.
He led Utah County’s first public Hanukkah menorah lighting last year at Provo’s historic courthouse, brought a kosher food truck to a team weight training and wrapped tefillin with Zippel in the BYU stadium. The tefillin ritual performed by Jewish men involves strapping black boxes containing Torah verses to the arm and forehead as a way of connecting to God.
“I told Jake, I said, after doing this here, after connecting to God on your terms inside the stadium, no amount of pressure will ever get to you,” Zippel said. “I think there’s no greater example of finding your corner of the world where you’re supposed to make your impact and making that impact.”
Retzlaff is affiliated with the Reform denomination of Judaism, which melds Jewish tradition with modern sensibilities, often prioritizing altruistic values and personal choice over a strict interpretation of Jewish law. He plays football on Friday nights and Saturdays during Shabbat and says sports have become a way to connect with his faith and to inspire young Jewish athletes.
Among them is Hunter Smith, a 14-year-old high school quarterback from Chicago who flew to Utah with his dad, brother and a group of Jewish friends to watch Retzlaff play. The brothers sported Retzlaff’s No. 12 jerseys, and their father Cameron wore a “BYJew” T-shirt depicting Retzlaff emerging from a Star of David, the most recognizable symbol of the faith.
“Being the only Jewish quarterback in my area that I know of, I feel like I get to pave my own path in a way,” Smith said during Saturday’s game. “Jake’s the only Jewish quarterback in college football, so he’s someone I can relate to and is like a role model for me, someone I can really look up to.”
When Retzlaff lit Provo’s giant menorah last December, Zippel said he was touched to hear the quarterback speak about the importance of his visibility at a time when some Jewish students didn’t feel safe expressing their religious identity on their own campuses amid heightened antisemitism in the United States.
His presence has been especially impactful for BYU alumna Malka Moya, 30, who had struggled to navigate her intersecting identities on the campus as someone who is both Jewish and a Latter-day Saint.
“Jake feels very comfortable wearing his Star of David all the time,” said Moya, who lives near Provo. “I haven’t always been very comfortable with expressing my Jewish identity. But, more recently, I feel like if he can do it, I can do it.”
