Today's coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 2093 new cases, 56 more deaths; Total vaccinations data was incorrect, government says; Ontario to provide modelling update - Toronto Star | Canada News Media
Today's coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 2093 new cases, 56 more deaths; Total vaccinations data was incorrect, government says; Ontario to provide modelling update – Toronto Star
8:45 a.m. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits remains at a historic high
8:40 a.m. Health Canada data suggests worrying uptick of infections directly connected to foreign arrivals
6 a.m. German health chief warns of 10 hard weeks ahead
4:55 a.m. Ontario to provide pandemic modelling update as daily case counts decline
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Thursday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
10:20 a.m.: Ontario is reporting nearly 64,700 tests completed.
Locally, there are 700 new cases in Toronto, 331 in Peel, 228 in York Region and 123 in Niagara.
As of 8 p.m. Wednesday, 317,240 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered across the province.
10:10 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 2,093 new cases with 56 more deaths.
The seven-day average is down to 2,128 cases daily, or 102 weekly per 100,000.
The seven-day average for deaths is up to 57.1/day.
9:57 a.m. (will be updated): The government of Ontario says it had been misinterpreting data on the number of people who have received both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccination.
Officials inadvertently posted dose information, rather than the total vaccination data. As a result, the number of epople who have been fully vaccinated is half of what is currently listed.
The government said they are updating the total vaccinations completed category to reflect the total number of people who have been fully vaccinated and not the number of doses.
9:04 a.m. Vaughan is moving to reopen the city’s outdoor ice rinks, a toboggan hill and an off-leash dog park after being closed for almost two weeks.
“Our outdoor rinks, toboggan hill and dog park are reopening with new systems — like online registration for skaters, increased patrols and mandatory mask usage — in place to further reduce the spread of this deadly virus,” said city manager Jim Harnum in a statement.
The city temporarily closed the city amenities on Jan. 15 due to the rising COVID-19 case numbers and “people crowding in these spaces while not following public health guidelines around social distancing and mask usage.”
The toboggan hill at North Maple Regional Park and the dog park at 299 Racco Parkway reopened on Wednesday and the city’s five outdoor ice rinks are set to reopen on Monday.
8:45 a.m. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell but remained at a historically high 847,000 last week, a sign that layoffs keep coming as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.
Last week’s claims fell by 67,000, from 914,000 the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday. Before the virus hit the United States hard last March, weekly applications for jobless aid had never topped 700,000.
Overall, nearly 4.8 million Americans are continuing to receive traditional state unemployment benefits. That is down from a staggering peak of nearly 25 million in May when the virus — and lockdowns and other measures to contain it — brought economic activity to a near halt. The drop suggests that some of the unemployed are finding new jobs and that others have exhausted state benefits.
The job market remains under strain even though the spread of COVID-19 vaccines offers hope for an end to the health crisis and a return to normal economic life.
While travel exposures account for less than two per cent of all Canada’s COVID-19 cases, the number of cases in recent travellers, and people they came into close contact with after arriving, shows continual growth in recent months.
In December, 486 cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in recent travellers, the most since March and up from 312 in November and 204 in October. Despite mandatory two-week quarantines for international travellers, there were 1,258 COVID-19 cases confirmed in people who had close contact with a recent traveller in December, up from 744 in November and 704 in October.
In the first three weeks of January, 384 travel cases and 607 traveller-contact cases were confirmed.
The figures also correspond with a recent rise in the number of people travelling, at least by air. Land-border arrivals are typically fewer in the winter because of the weather in much of the country, but more people arrived from the U.S. by air in December than any month since March. Arrivals from other international locations were higher in December than any month except August.
8:30 a.m. The daily number of new COVID-19 cases in Toronto has dropped and so has the rate at which the virus is spreading, but the increase in new variants of the disease — including one that is more contagious and perhaps more deadly — means it is too early to declare victory, local officials said Wednesday.
“Medically, we are in an uncertain phase,” said Dr. Eileen de Villa, medical officer of health, speaking at a COVID-19 update from city hall alongside Mayor John Tory. “The emergence of coronavirus variants is one feature of this uncertainty.”
De Villa reported 502 new cases of COVID-19 in Toronto and 41 new hospital admissions for a total of 520 people in hospital. Eleven more have died.
8 a.m. Self-employed Canadians who are being asked to repay the Canada Emergency Response Benefit after a Canada Revenue Agency error are scaling up their pressure on the government to allow them to keep the benefit.
On Wednesday, Green Party MP Paul Manly presented a petition to the House of Commons that received more than 7,000 signatures over a month, asking the government to allow self-employed CERB recipients to retroactively use their gross self-employed income instead of net to assess their eligibility for the benefit.
Manly, who sponsored the petition, said in an interview he’s heard from self-employed Canadians across the country who applied for CERB “in good faith” and are now being told they didn’t qualify.
7:50 a.m. While several countries are revising their mask advice either to ditch cloth masks or recommend doubling up as more virulent variants spread, Canada is sticking to its previous recommendations.
The United States’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, said in an interview with NBC Monday that wearing two masks “just makes common sense,” as adding another layer of protection will help prevent COVID-19 from spreading.
Photos captured in the last two weeks in the U.S. show Fauci along with public figures like U.S. First Lady Jill Biden and youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman also sporting a double mask by wearing a surgical mask under their cloth masks.
7:40 a.m. Ontario is considering an order that international passengers arriving at Pearson airport must submit to COVID-19 tests to catch cases of the U.K. variant and other more contagious strains of the virus that has killed almost 6,000 in the province, the Star has learned.
The move is being driven by concerns the federal government isn’t moving fast enough on border restrictions at a time when vaccines are in short supply and the variants pose an increased threat to health and hospital capacity, a senior provincial source said Wednesday.
Chief medical officer Dr. David Williams — who raised concerns Monday about the problem — is strongly considering an order under section 22 of Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act mandating the tests, the government source added.
7:30 a.m. A prominent GTA critical care physician is alleging he was fired over his outspoken criticism of Ontario’s pandemic response.
Dr. Brooks Fallis said in an emailed statement to the Star he learned his contract as interim medical director of critical care at William Osler Health System had been terminated in January.
“When I met with some of the members of the senior leadership team about this, I was told I was being let go as Interim Medical Director — not because of my performance as a physician or as a hospital leader — but because of my outspoken, public statements regarding Ontario’s pandemic response,” his statement said.
“As a result of my actions, the hospital was under pressure from the Provincial Government, leading to concern about the possible loss of funding for the hospital.”
7:20 a.m. Mutations of the virus that causes COVID-19, called SARS-CoV-2, are evolving at a higher rate than at the beginning of the pandemic, according to scientists.
One of the most studied is the variant first reported in the U.K., called B.1.1.7, which is thought to be more transmissible, a trait it appears to share with the variant first reported in South Africa, B.1.351.
The mutations could mean that slight alterations in vaccines may be necessary in the future to ensure they remain effective.
Already, Moderna is creating a booster for its vaccine after research showed a decrease in antibodies to the B.1.351 variant produced by its vaccine, although the vaccine remains effective.
Meanwhile, a consortium of scientists in the U.K. is one step behind the mutating virus, sequencing hundreds of thousands of samples of SARS-CoV-2 to unlock the genetic codes that are key to fighting the virus.
7:16 a.m. Israel on Thursday said it was extending coronavirus vaccinations to adults age 35 and older, an expansion of its world-leading drive to vanquish COVID-19.
Health Ministry Director General Hezi Levy said shots would be available to the new age group starting Friday.
The change reflects Israel’s aggressive drive to inoculate its entire population by the spring and the country is on track to do so. More than a quarter of Israel’s 9.3 million people have been vaccinated so far.
But Israel also is home to one of the developing world’s highest rate of infections, driven by ultra-Orthodox towns that are flouting safety rules and clashing with police trying to enforce them. Some 8,000 new cases are detected each day.
The country is in its third lockdown to contain the virus’ spread. This week it tightened the closures by shuttering its international airport to nearly all flights.
6:21 a.m. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says another 400 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been secured for the continent through the Serum Institute of India.
Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong told reporters that with the new doses, on top of the 270 million doses announced earlier, “I think we’re beginning to make very good progress.”
As with many vaccine deals, there are no immediate details on cost or how much people might pay per dose.
Parts of the African continent are now seeing a strong second surge in coronavirus infections, which Nkengasong calls “very aggressive now.”
6 a.m. Germany’s health minister says there are at least “10 hard weeks” ahead amid difficulties in getting large quantities of vaccines.
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Health Minister Jens Spahn, who faces political pressure over the slow start to Germany’s vaccination campaign, wrote on Twitter Thursday that Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s 16 state governors should hold a special meeting to discuss vaccine strategy.
Spahn said vaccine manufacturers also should be invited to “explain how complex production is.” He stressed that “the quality must be very good” in order to protect people.
Spahn wrote that “we will go through at least another 10 hard weeks with the scarcity of vaccine.”
Germany’s current lockdown, its second, was recently extended until Feb. 14. Infection figures are falling, but officials are worried about the potential impact of coronavirus variants such as the one first detected in Britain.
5:15 a.m. Travellers returning to New Zealand will face stricter rules at quarantine hotels as health authorities investigate how up to three people got infected with the coronavirus while isolating at Auckland’s Pullman Hotel.
The people were released before testing positive and were potentially contagious, but so far testing has shown no evidence the virus has spread in the community. Health authorities believe they caught the virus from another quarantined traveller. New Zealand has managed to stamp out community transmission of the virus.
5:10 a.m. Vietnam reported 82 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, hours after confirming the first two infections in nearly two months.
Seventy-two of the cases came from an electronic company in Hai Duong province, where a 34-year-old female employee tested positive after her colleague was found to carry the virus from Osaka, Japan, several days earlier, the Health Ministry said.
It said the woman who was tested in Japan carried the U.K. variant, which could spread faster.
The company with over 2,200 workers was closed for disinfection and the provincial authority locked down surrounding communities to curb the outbreak.
The ministry said over 3,000 people in the area will be tested.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Quang Ninh province, 10 people tested positive after a man working at Van Don International Airport was confirmed to be infected.
5:05 a.m. Sri Lanka’s president on Thursday welcomed the first 500,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine from India, which has donated the shots to eight countries in the region.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
Sri Lanka said 150,000 health workers and 115,000 selected military and police troops will be the first to be inoculated at six hospitals in Colombo and its suburbs.
One of the hospitals is reserved for COVID-19 patients while the others have separate wards for the coronavirus.
The Health Ministry plans to expand the vaccination campaign to 4,000 hospitals and health centres in other parts of the country next week.
India’s donation covers 250,000 people and Sri Lanka is making efforts to obtain more vaccines, either through donation or by purchasing them.
The country has ordered 2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine and is planning to order 3 million more from India. It also expects some from the U.N. COVAX Facility to be able to vaccine 20% of the population.
5:01 a.m. A World Health Organization team emerged from quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan on Thursday to start field work in a fact-finding mission on the origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
The researchers, who were required to complete 14 days in quarantine after arriving in China, left their quarantine hotel and boarded a bus in the midafternoon.
The mission has become politically charged, as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak. A major question is where the Chinese side will allow the researchers to go and whom they will be able to talk to.
Yellow barriers blocked the entrance to the hotel, keeping the media at a distance. Before the researchers boarded, workers in full protective gear could be seen loading their luggage onto the bus, including two musical instruments, a dumbbell and four yoga mattresses.
4:55 a.m. Ontario will provide an update on COVID-19 modelling projections Thursday.
The province says Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, the co-chairman of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, will present the update this afternoon.
The new data comes two weeks after the province invoked a stay-at-home order in a bid to halt surging case spread.
The province’s chief medical officer of health says a provincewide lockdown, which started in late December, has contributed to a reduction in daily cases.
The last modelling update provided by the province earlier this month warned that rising virus case rates threatened to overwhelm the health care system.
4:44 a.m. The impact of COVID-19 on intensive care units remains “alarming” despite a recent steadying of the number of patients treated there, says a group representing Ontario’s hospitals.
Anthony Dale, president of the Ontario Hospital Association, said there are, on average, 25 new COVID-19 patients being admitted to ICUs every day.
“This apparent stabilization masks the fact that capacity is actually being freed up as patients either leave ICU as they get better, or pass away from COVID-19 or another very serious condition,” Dale said.
Over the last week, up to 416 patients with COVID-19 have been treated in ICUs, according to data provided by the Ontario Hospital Association.
On Jan. 15, Ontario recorded an all-time high of 420 patients with COVID-19 in ICUs — about a quarter of all intensive care patients.
“The rate of transmission appears to be decelerating, but we cannot declare victory,” Dale said. “We must remain extremely cautious and keep up the fight against community spread to keep up our progress and prevent a third wave, especially when we see the new variant’s impacts in the United Kingdom.”
The province warned at the outset of the most recent lockdown that ICUs were on the verge of being overrun with COVID-19 patients, at which point physicians would be in the difficult position to choose who received critical care and who did not.
4 a.m. As the federal government prepares to slap new restrictions on international travel, Health Canada data suggest a worrying uptick of infections directly connected to foreign arrivals.
While travel exposures account for less than two per cent of all Canada’s COVID-19 cases, the number of cases in recent travellers, and people they came into close contact with after arriving, shows continual growth in recent months.
In December, 486 cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in recent travellers, the most since March and up from 312 in November and 204 in October. Despite mandatory two-week quarantines for international travellers, there were 1,258 COVID-19 cases confirmed in people who had close contact with a recent traveller in December, up from 744 in November and 704 in October.
In the first three weeks of January, 384 travel cases and 607 traveller-contact cases were confirmed.
The figures also correspond with a recent rise in the number of people travelling, at least by air. Land-border arrivals are typically fewer in the winter because of the weather in much of the country, but more people arrived from the U.S. by air in December than any month since March. Arrivals from other international locations were higher in December than any month except August.
Wednesday 8:45 p.m.: Most people in British Columbia are doing their best to follow public health guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some are acting badly, Premier John Horgan said Wednesday.
Horgan also highlighted the case of a B.C. couple who travelled to Yukon, where they’re alleged to have jumped the queue to get an early COVID-19 vaccine shot.
“I believe there’s nothing more un-Canadian than going to another jurisdiction to jump the line because you have the means to do so,” Horgan said at a news conference. “Those are the types of examples we want to put in our rear-view mirror.”
Horgan said it’s disconcerting that some people are holding large gatherings in Vancouver penthouses and others are looking for parties in Whistler despite health restrictions.
He expressed his concern as well over incidents of racist behaviour towards Indigenous people who are fighting COVID-19 outbreaks in their communities.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
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