TORONTO —
One young woman who received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is stuck in limbo, waiting to find out what will happen with her second dose, now that health authorities have pressed pause on administering that vaccine to those under age 55.
The 21-year-old Toronto-area resident received her first dose of AstraZeneca from a pharmacy. She said she was able to get the vaccine because the pharmacy had extras.
“I was told by this very government that it was safe, effective, and to take the first vaccine I could get,” Emma Hoffer-Weinper told CTVNews.ca in an email on Wednesday.
She received her first dose on March 17. Less than two weeks later, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommended immediately halting use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in people under age 55.
Most provinces were rolling out the AstraZeneca vaccine in older populations, so the number of people under 55 who received a dose of the vaccine is believed to be low.
“There is no information on what to do for us under 55 who have received this vaccine. The number who received it is small, insignificant to many. But we exist,” Hoffer-Weinper added.
She said she feels misled, having initially been told that the vaccine was safe, and the push for everyone to take the first one available to them.
“Be transparent or don’t offer vaccines. We didn’t sign up for a vaccine to be a trial study, we signed up for one that is safe and effective,” she said.
As for next steps, nothing is yet set in stone, but there are two options being considered.
According to Dr. Caroline Quach, chair of NACI, either the AstraZeneca vaccinations will resume in that age group or they will be paused permanently.
“If that is the case, the [second] dose is not due before at least 12 weeks (on label for AZ) and we will have, by then, results from the mixed schedule study that is currently done in the UK where participants are receiving AZ followed by the Pfizer vaccine. This study started recruitment on February 1st,” she told CTVNews.ca in an email on Thursday.
She said at this time, the pause is temporary while Health Canada conducts its enquiry. That doesn’t give people like Hoffer-Weinper a definitive answer. She’ll have to wait to see if Health Canada resumes vaccinations in her age group or pauses indefinitely– and if it’s the latter, what happens next will depend on the British study’s outcome.
While Hoffer-Weinper said she’s had no adverse reactions, she regrets having gotten the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the toll it’s taken on her anxiety.
“It’s in the back of my head every single day that I read the word ‘Pfizer’ or ‘vaccine,’” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Thursday.
She worries that the confusion over the AstraZeneca vaccine will cause further vaccine hesitancy, especially given the difficulty she had in finding an answer.
“Not everyone wants to research and not everyone knows how to research,” she said. “I spent four years in university and I can’t find information on this, but I can’t even begin to imagine the fear and hesitancy that people will get if they don’t want to, or know how to do that.”
Knowing that she’ll have an answer sooner rather than later has given her some relief, but she wishes she had been told sooner, especially since there seem to be so few people under age 55 who got a dose of AstraZeneca.
“They could have just called us and said ‘don’t worry we’re working on it’, any kind of reassurance, even if they don’t have all the answers,” she said. “Communication is key, I think more so than the actual concrete answers.”
Despite all of the stress and anxiety, she says she hasn’t lost faith in vaccines.
“I think that the vaccines are one of the greatest scientific gifts that we’ll have in our generation,”she said.
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.
