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The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada for March 19, 2021 – The Record (New Westminster)

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TORONTO — The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times Eastern):

7:05 p.m.

B.C. is reporting 737 new cases of COVID-19, pushing the province’s total number of cases to 90,786.

Sixty-eight of the new cases involve variants of concern, and those cases now account for 1,200 of the total.

There have been two additional deaths.

So far, the province has administered 490,022 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, with 87,139 of them representing second doses.

7 p.m.

Alberta is reporting a sharp rise in the number of COVID-19 cases detected in the last 24 hours.

Officials say 696 people tested positive for the virus in the last day, and of those, 130 were cases of variants of concern.

The number of new daily cases has not been that high since the middle of January.

On a positive note, medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw says no new deaths were reported.

She says it has been five days since a COVID-19 death has occurred in continuing care.

She says this is a positive sign that vaccines combined with public health measures are working.

5 p.m.

Regina’s largest school division says students will move to remote learning over concerns about the city’s spread of COVID-19 variants.

Regina Public Schools says Grade 9 to 12 students will transition to online classes next Wednesday and younger grades will make the switch March 29.

The board says students will return to class after spring break on April 12.

The division says the temporary move to online learning is a proactive step to deal with the rise in more infectious virus strains.

4:30 p.m.

Prince Edward Island is reporting four new cases of COVID-19 today.

Chief public health officer Dr. Heather Morrison says one case involves a man in his 20s who travelled outside Atlantic Canada.

She says another case involves a man in his 30s who travelled outside the Atlantic region for work. 

Morrison says two of the man’s close contacts – a woman in her 30s and a male under the age of 19 — have also tested positive.

The person under the age of 19 was involved in minor sports activities and Morrison says public health will reach out to his close contacts.

3:45 p.m.

Saskatchewan is reporting 174 new COVID-19 cases.

Health officials say 86 of the new infections are found in and around Regina.

The provincial capital is a hot spot for more infectious COVID-19 variants.

The Ministry of Health has confirmed 156 variant cases provincewide.

It says most of them are from the stain first detected in the United Kingdom, known as B.1.1.7, and found in the Regina area.

The province says there are another 508 probable variant cases, with 434 found in the region.

1:40 p.m.

Manitoba health officials announced the death of a man in his 30s and 91 new cases of COVID-19 Friday. 

Dr. Jazz Atwal, acting deputy chief provincial public health officer, says health officials are now strongly recommending people get tested for COVID-19 before travelling to First Nations communities.

Vaccine eligibility has also been expanded to people 69 and older and First Nation people 49 and older. 

To date, 123,144 doses of have been administered.

12 p.m.

New Brunswick is reporting two new cases of COVID-19 today.

Health officials say one case is a person in their 60s in the Edmundston region.

They say the other case is in the Bathurst area and involves someone in their 40s.

New Brunswick has 48 active reported infections and one person in hospital with the disease. 

11.50 a.m.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada is finalizing an agreement with the United States for 1.5 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. 

The White House has characterized the arrangement as a loan, to be reciprocated in a similar exchange of vaccine doses at a later date.

Trudeau says the two countries are putting the finishing touches on what Procurement Minister Anita Anand calls an “exchange.”

Anand says the doses are expected in Canada by the end of the month.

Trudeau thanked President Joe Biden for his ongoing collaboration.

11:43 a.m.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada will receive one million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine doses per week through to the end of May.

Shipments are set to begin Monday.

Procurement Minister Anita Anand says Canada will have received 9.5 million doses by the end of March.

11.42 a.m.

Nova Scotia is reporting three new cases of COVID-19 today.

The infections in the Halifax area are close contacts of previously reported cases.

Nova Scotia currently has 17 active infections.

Health officials say that as of Thursday, 58,036 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered, with 20,050 people having received their booster shot.

11:35 a.m.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadian Armed Forces troops will be deployed to northern Manitoba.

They will help with COVID-19 vaccinations in First Nations communities that are harder to reach.

He says the military is planning details for deployment in up to 23 communities.

11.18 a.m.

Quebec is reporting 764 new cases of COVID-19 and 11 more related deaths, including one in the past 24 hours.

Health officials says hospitalizations dropped by 15 to 504, and 99 people were in intensive care, a drop of two.

Health Minister Christian Dube is lauding the 38,459 vaccine doses administered on Thursday — a daily record since the inoculation campaign began.

The province had administered 872,459 doses as of Thursday, representing roughly 9.8 per cent of the population.

10.42 a.m.

Canada’s top doctor says an increase in more transmissible variants of the COVID-19 virus may be threatening progress in containing the spread of infections.

Dr. Theresa Tam says Canada has seen almost 4,500 variant cases, with 90 per cent related to the strain first detected in the U.K.

Tam says variants are threatening the country’s progress before vaccines can bring full benefits.

She adds variants of concern are making up a higher proportion of new cases in parts of Canada.

To date, more than 922,000 cases of COVID-19, including over 22,500 deaths, have been reported nationally.

10:30 a.m.

Ontario is reporting 1,745 new cases of COVID-19 today and 10 more deaths linked to the virus.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says there are 478 new cases in Toronto and 344 in Peel Region.

She also says there are 174 new cases in York Region and 116 in Hamilton.

More than 61,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the province since the last daily report.

9:50 a.m.

Quebec is allowing everyone 65 and older across the province to sign up for a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Late Thursday, the province’s appointment portal opened up vaccinations in all 15 health regions, after opening it to Montrealers in that age bracket one week ago and Abitibi-Temiscamingue and Cote-Nord residents earlier this week.

The Quebec government intends to vaccinate five million people with a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in the next 100 days.

9:40 a.m.

Ontario says that residents aged 75 and older can start scheduling COVID-19 vaccine appointments on Monday through the province’s booking portal. 

Adults 75 and older were set to become eligible by the first week of April.

However, Premier Doug Ford says the province’s immunization effort is ahead of schedule. 

Officials say more than 50 per cent of Ontario residents aged 80 and older have now received at least one vaccine dose. 

A pilot program offering vaccines in some pharmacies is also expanding and will now offer the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot to anyone aged 60 and older.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 19, 2021.

The Canadian Press

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STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”

More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.

Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.

The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.

However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.

Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.

“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.

What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.

In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.

Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.

Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.

Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.

Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.

Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)

There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.

“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa showed telltale warning signs before erupting in 2022

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.

That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.

Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.

“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.

Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.

When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.

The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.

The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.

Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.

Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.

Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.

(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Waymo’s robotaxis now open to anyone who wants a driverless ride in Los Angeles

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Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.

The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.

After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.

Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.

Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.

“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.

Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.

But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.

Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.

Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.

That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.

Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.

Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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