The top doctors of three COVID-19 hot spots in Ontario are urging the province to impose tougher restrictions, including a stay-at-home order, to address a surge in new infections.
The chief medical officers of health for Toronto, Peel Region and Ottawa made the recommendations in a letter to Dr. David Williams, the province’s top doctor.
“A stay-at-home order issued by the province through an Emergency Order is necessary to prevent and mitigate large scale morbidity and mortality and irreparable strain on the health-care system,” said the letter signed by Dr. Eileen da Villa, Dr. Lawrence Loh and Dr. Vera Etches.
The letter comes just days after Premier Doug Ford’s government imposed a provincewide month-long shutdown that critics argue does not go far enough to address more transmissible variants of concern.
The three doctors also appealed to Williams to move schools to online learning in regions with significant COVID-19 outbreaks, remove businesses from the list of essential services, and implement 50 per cent staffing limits for those businesses deemed essential.
I am asking each and every one of you to help us get this virus under control.
They also asked the government to impose travel restrictions between regions within Ontario and for the province to provide paid sick days to supplement the federal program.
The Ontario Medical Association also joined the calls for stricter measures and a stay-at-home order to address the increase in COVID-19 cases.
“The consequences of not doing so could include more people sick and dying than we have experienced thus far; so many so, that doctors could no longer care for everyone,” said Dr. Samantha Hill, the group’s president.
Credit: Science Advisory and Modelling Consensus Tables
A spokeswoman for Health Minister Christine Elliott said the shutdown was aimed at dealing with the third wave of the pandemic, but noted it takes time for the intended effects of the measures to be realized due to the incubation period of the virus.
But some public health leaders appeared to have lost patience with the province’s approach.
Loh of Peel Region used his powers under Ontario’s public health legislation Monday to order local schools closed for in-person learning.
All schools in Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga will move to remote learning for at least two weeks, starting on Tuesday, Loh said.
“With increasing case counts and the presence of variants of concern, we need to break chains of transmission and keep our schools safe,” Loh said in a statement.
The decision to close schools in the region did not sit well with Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.
“Don’t close elementary schools. Vaccinate educators,” he tweeted Monday.
Instead of closing schools, Brown suggested closing workplaces like Amazon, food processing plants, big box stores and factories.
“If our supply chain can’t handle it, then vaccinate essential workers. Same old approach isn’t working,” he said.
If schools are being closed because they are a #COVID19 risk then why are we not vaccinating educators during this multi week closure. Currently, they are slated for June. This makes no sense. Vaccinate educators NOW so that we can reopen schools. @ETFOPeel@OSSTFD19@dpsuoecta
The president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario said all schools in hot spot regions should move to online learning until all teachers can be vaccinated.
“As medical experts have said, there is no excuse—no valid reason—to not begin vaccinating all essential workers today; this includes all education workers,” Sam Hammond said in a statement.
A spokesperson from Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the province firmly believes that schools should remain open for in-class learning as they are critical for students’ metal health.
Tory stressed that the plan was contingent on the availability of vaccine supply in the coming weeks.
“We hope to be able to take it to workplaces … where we know there’s a higher risk just given all the circumstances, and to other areas where we know people are more vulnerable,” Tory said.
Ontario’s vaccine rollout began in December and focused initially on immunizing some of the province’s oldest residents in long-term care and health-care workers.
In recent months, it has shifted in a descending order through the oldest age groups in the province, with Toronto now starting to give the shot to people 60 years and older at its six mass vaccination sites.
But increasingly, experts in the health-care sector say essential workers who cannot work from home and often cannot self-isolate if they contract the illness should be prioritized for the shot.
ICU doctors have said many of the patients they’re treating these days are essential workers who got infected in the workplace.
The province said 494 patients were in intensive care because of COVID-19 and 293 on a ventilator – 44 new patients were admitted in ICUs on Sunday.
Ontario reported nearly 6,000 new COVID-19 cases over a two-day span – 2,938 new cases on Monday and 3,041 cases on Sunday – and 22 deaths.
There were 942 people hospitalized with the virus during the same period, though the Ministry of Health noted that 10 per cent of Ontario’s hospitals do not submit data on weekends.
With files from Denise Paglinawan and Holly McKenzie-Sutter
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
