TORONTO —
“Circuit breaker,” “wave breaker,” “fire-break” — the terms vary, but the concept is similar: a relatively short COVID-19 lockdown with a set end date as opposed to an extended lockdown until cases drop past a certain point.
It’s a strategy several European countries have implemented or are preparing to, as numerous regions battle a rise in cases.
Wales is in the middle of a two-week fire-break, and has had businesses and schools closed since October 23, with a plan to reopen on November 9. Northern Ireland introduced increased restrictions on October 16, to be in place for four weeks. Germany introduced a partial shutdown Monday, and England is set to enter a four week lockdown on Thursday, which will be followed by a tiered system of restrictions.
But how do these smaller lockdowns differ from the measures seen at the start of the pandemic, and is it something Canada should consider?
WHAT IS IT?
According to Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, the idea has been around longer than terms like “circuit breaker,” which have popped up over the last few weeks.
He told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview that the general idea is “breaking the chain of transmission.”
Since the virus is transmitted directly from person to person, and those with the virus are generally thought to remain infectious for 14 days, theoretically, if no one in the country left their home for two weeks, transmission would simply stop, he said.
Of course, this thought experiment doesn’t capture the reality, he added. Even with tightened restrictions, people will still be moving about, and many will still have to work at essential jobs. The goal of a shorter circuit breaker lockdown is not an eradication of transmission, but a pause to hopefully allow cases to drop.
“You would continue to have new cases during that time because of prior exposure,” Furness said, adding that infections would also spread within households during the start of the lockdown, creating, potentially, a small boom of cases before the numbers began to drop off.
“It almost looks like a short-term rise and then a fall.”
HOW LONG IS A CIRCUIT BREAKER LOCKDOWN?
According to Furness, even a short lockdown would have to be longer than two weeks, which is the generally accepted stretch of time needed to self-isolate. Some people will contract COVID-19 from their household members maybe one or two days into a lockdown, he explained, so if the circuit breaker only lasted 14 days, those people could still be infectious at the end.
A lockdown of at least 18 days would be needed to drop cases down effectively, Furness said, adding that he would recommend 20 days for a short lockdown.
“That would bring us down from a 1,000 a day to maybe […] two, 300 a day. That might be achievable,” he said. “But you really need clear messaging for everyone that just said, this is it, we all have to row. We all have to do our bit.”
DOES IT WORK?
It depends on the metric of success — a strict lockdown of 20 days would not wipe out COVID-19.
“It won’t actually be an eradication or a real reset the way I think people imagine it,” Furness said.
But even a shorter lockdown would ease the pressure on contact tracers and allow them to catch up.
“It’s not just the number of cases that overwhelms contact tracers. It’s the fact that cases now have dozens and dozens of contacts instead of one or two or three,” Furness said. “If everyone’s in their house for two weeks and then someone gets sick, the contact tracing is very simple.”
It could allow countries to “regain control” of the situation, he said, including Canada, if it implemented such a strategy.
“We do not have control. We’re not using testing strategically, our resources are overwhelmed. Our hospitals are going to start to fill up,” he said. “We’re not in control.”
In Quebec, which has been the epicentre of the pandemic in Canada, deaths and hospitalizations are not rising at the same rate as cases. According to the most recent data, 13 people were admitted to hospital in the last day, for a total of 539. They added 1,029 new cases on Wednesday.
A short lockdown is easier to sell to the public and wouldn’t hit businesses as hard, Furness added, but it requires discipline and clear communication from public officials, something he pointed out has been lacking in some regions.
“Our ability to convey clearly to people — certainly in Ontario — what’s expected and what’s needed, has been really poor,” he said. “So there’s a real hypothetical there to have effective communication to get the compliance for this to even work at all.”
Although short lockdowns have allowed some regions to regain their footing in the battle against COVID-19, some have changed their end dates as the time to cease the lockdown approached. Scotland planned a two-week circuit breaker, but extended the restrictions for a further week, then announced they would be transitioning into a five-level system of restrictions depending on different regions of Scotland.
The move led many to suggest circuit breaker lockdowns do not work, or that two weeks is insufficient.
Announcing a temporary lockdown with strict restrictions and a planned end date could backfire if the government extended restrictions after advertising it as temporary, Furness said.
If people are’t compliant with the lockdown — through poor communication from government officials for what is expected of them, or insufficient help from the government to allow people to stay home for 20 days — and cases don’t really drop, “you’ve lost the public,” Furness explained.
“You’re gambling with a snap […] circuit breaker, you’re gambling that you can actually do it effectively, because if you can’t, you’ll really have people’s wrath.”
IS A LOCKDOWN INEVITABLE?
However, Furness said he’d be surprised if Canada’s hot spot regions were not seeing lockdowns again by January — not because lockdowns are the only way to handle rising cases, but because he believes we’ve failed at the other way to control a pandemic: aggressive testing.
“If you look at different countries’ approaches, there’s two ways that you can interrupt a pandemic or a big outbreak,” he said. “One is through lockdowns and the other one is through testing.
“In other words, we could test our way out of this.”
But as the second wave has hit Canada, testing rates have not gone up — in fact, the opposite has occurred in Ontario, one of the hardest hit provinces. Only 25,279 tests were performed on Monday, around half of what the province is capable of processing, while 1,050 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded.
Furness said that we have not been using testing proactively in a way that would help to control the virus. If testing had been deployed to test those at risk when lockdown restrictions were easing, we would have a better picture of where transmission is occurring.
Because it’s not just that case numbers are increasing. The percentage of new cases with no known epidemiological source — meaning it’s unknown how and where the person contracted the virus — is growing. According to data tracked by Public Health Ontario, cases with no known source now regularly make up more than a third of new daily cases.
“When we opened schools, it should have come with a plan to test teachers every week,” Furness said. “When we opened bars and restaurants, it should’ve come with a plan to test waiters and bartenders every single week. In other words, you can do these risky measures if you’re actually on top of it and grabbing cases.
“We’re not deploying testing at all now in the second wave in any way to try and slow transmission. That is a horrible mistake. And we’re going to have to lock down because of it. But we’re choosing that, we’re choosing to hurdle toward the need for a lockdown.”
If it does come to more lockdowns in Canada to control the areas where cases are currently rising, Furness believes those lockdowns will need to be severe, no matter how long they are. In March and April, he pointed out, stores that sold “anything remotely edible,” were able to remain open. At the next lockdown, this may not be the case.
“I think pretty much everything locked down except grocery stores, drug stores and arguably liquor stores, and obviously hospitals and public safety services,” he said. “We’re really going to have to clamp down on that. Really, no cake shops, no bakeries, no convenience stores.”
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
