The Public Health Agency of Canada says Ottawa plans to distribute more than 70,000 Pfizer-BiotNTech vaccine doses this week ahead of a major ramp-up, but no Moderna doses are on the schedule.
The agency says 70,200 Pfizer doses are forecasted for delivery to the provinces and territories for the week starting Feb. 8, followed by about 336,000 and 396,000 doses in the final two weeks of the month.
However, its distribution schedule lists no new Moderna shipments beyond Feb. 7, as confusion over deliveries deflates Canadians’ confidence in the Liberal government’s vaccine rollout.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander managing logistics of vaccine delivery for the agency, said Thursday that Canada does not know how many Moderna doses will arrive in the weeks ahead, and the company hasn’t said why it has reduced shipments to Canada.
Pfizer and Moderna are the only two companies to have vaccines approved by Health Canada, though the department is reviewing vaccines from three others: AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Johnson and Johnson.
Weekly projections on vaccine distribution from the public health agency are fluid and subject to change.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has maintained that delivery delays are temporary, and that Pfizer and Moderna tell him Canada is still on track to receive six million doses by the end of March.
Moderna was initially slated to deliver almost 250,000 doses to Canada in the third week of February. The zero deliveries projected for the rest of the month — at least for now — come after a 20 per cent cut in last week’s Moderna shipments.
The blank Moderna schedule also follows Pfizer-BioNTech’s decision to slash deliveries by more than two-thirds over four weeks due to supply constraints.
This week’s 70,200 Pfizer doses fall far short of the 366,000 doses per week originally planned for February, though the expected ramp-up later this month will make up for some of the shortfall.
There were no new vaccines delivered to the provinces and territories on Sunday, leaving a total of 1.2 million doses delivered so far.
Some 340,000 were from Moderna and 858,000 from Pfizer, according to the public health agency.
The provinces reported 11,885 new vaccinations administered for a total of about 1.07 million doses given as of Sunday night.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s announcement of a timeline for ending the province-wide lockdown offers a glimmer of hope for some GTA businesses, but is harsh news for others, business owners say.
For months, retail stores and restaurants in Toronto, Peel and York Region have been surviving on takeout service and curbside pickup only, while hair salons and gyms have had to shutter completely.
“‘Shocked’ and ‘disappointed’ could be the only two words [that can be used] to be polite,” says Annette Palumbo, who has been advocating on behalf of the beauty industry. She is stunned there is still no target date for salons, barber shops and spas to re-open.
“That’s a sad, sad call on the government’s part,” she adds. “To actually believe that people are opening up small businesses and the ones with the highest [safety] protocols are remaining closed?”
The Beauty United coalition estimates that 20 per cent of Ontario’s 3,500 salons and spas will not survive the lockdowns, while many of Ontario’s 32,000 hair stylists have been unemployed all this time.
“Nobody wants handouts,” says Palumbo. “We want to work.”
Today’s announcement also provided no relief for restaurants in the GTA. They will remain takeout-only as long as Peel, Toronto and York are in the grey lockdown zone of the provincial reopening framework.
For smaller retailers, there is a glimmer of hope. The president of the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) expressed optimism about the weeks to come.
In areas returning to the red zone, the province is allowing small business to re-open for in-store shopping, with a maximum 25 per cent capacity inside.
“We’ve been advocating for this for quite some time,” says TABIA president Maureen Sirois. “We know we can open safely and serve our customers safely. We are happy to be able to have them come back into our businesses.”
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business wrote a letter to every MPP last week asking that capacity be set individually for every store, based on 20 percent of its stated capacity under the fire code.
Many business groups are also saying small retailers should have been allowed to be open for the Christmas rush in December, adding they are now just looking forward.
“Ontario’s retail sector needs time to rebuild and it cannot sustain another round of closures,” says Diane Brisebois, president and CEO of the Retail Council of Canada. “This speaks to the importance of everyone – government, businesses and citizens alike – working together in the weeks and months ahead to preserve both public health and economic viability.”
The Retail Council of Canada, citing Statistics Canada, says Ontario has lost 150,000 jobs, with a substantial portion of them in retail.
“When you are a small business owner and you have invested your life, your blood and soul into your business, you’ve sold your car, re-mortgaged your home, you’ve applied for every single program out there and you still can’t break even, the frustrations are completely understandable,” says Julie Kwiecinski, director of provincial affairs, Ontario, for the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses.
If Toronto, Peel and York regions move out of the stay-at-home order as scheduled on February 22nd, many of these businesses will have been shut down for 92 days. Recovery won’t be easy and for some it may not happen at all.
VIDEO:
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/02/08/ontario-businesses-react-to-mixed-news-on-covid-19-lockdown-restrictions/
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is questioning Ottawa’s move to require hotel quarantines for international travellers, saying it may harm lower-income Canadians and infringe on citizens’ mobility rights.
Cara Zwibel, a lawyer who heads the organization’s fundamental freedoms program, is calling on the federal government to produce any evidence that returning passengers are breaching the current requirement to self-isolate at home, which she suggests is the only fair basis to toughen the rules.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced more than two weeks ago that travellers flying back from abroad will have to quarantine at a federally mandated hotel for up to three days at their own expense, though he acknowledged that only a fraction of COVID-19 cases appear to stem from overseas trips.
Zwibel suggests that the cost — $2,000 or more, according to the government — could be prohibitive for lower-income Canadians who need to care for sick relatives or receive specialized medical care abroad.
Health conditions that would make isolating in a hotel particularly challenging are another concern.
In a letter to Canada’s transport minister and attorney general, the civil liberties association is demanding Ottawa carve out quarantine exemptions and fee waivers for Canadians who seek to look after loved ones or receive treatment overseas, particularly people in narrow financial straits.
“For these individuals, travel is not a luxury,” Zwibel says in the letter.
“The government’s definition of what constitutes ‘essential travel’ for these purposes will be important.”
Ottawa has not announced when mandatory hotel quarantines will come into effect, one of several measures aimed at choking off viral spread at the border and deterring non-essential travel.
Trudeau announced on Jan. 29 that Canadian airlines had suspended flights to Mexico and the Caribbean until April 30. Residents who do choose to fly abroad now have to furnish negative COVID-19 test results less than 72 hours before departure back to home soil.
Roughly two per cent of cases with “known exposure” have been linked to international travel, and an even smaller proportion in recent weeks, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. However, there is still virtually no testing at the border and many recent cases do not have an identified source.
Section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that “every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada,” though all rights are subject to reasonable limits.
Senators have agreed to put a bill to expand access to medical assistance in dying to a final vote by Feb. 17, but they’ve signalled their intention to propose substantial amendments.
The agreed date for the vote will leave just over a week for the House of Commons to deal with any amendments approved by the Senate before a thrice-extended, court-imposed deadline of Feb. 26.
It’s a tight timetable that could yet make it impossible to meet the court deadline.
Senators, who began final debate Monday, will begin dealing with the amendments to Bill C-7 on Tuesday.
An amended version of the bill would have to go back to the House of Commons for MPs to decide whether to accept or reject the amendments before shipping it back to the Senate, where senators would have to decide whether to approve the bill even if some or all of their amendments were rejected.
In theory, the bill could bounce repeatedly back and forth between chambers.
The bill is intended to bring the law into compliance with a 2019 Quebec Superior Court ruling that struck down a provision allowing assisted dying only for those whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”
It scraps that provision but retains the foreseeable death concept to set up two sets of rules for eligibility: more relaxed rules for those who are near death and more stringent rules for those who are not.
It would also expressly prohibit assisted dying for individuals who are suffering solely from mental illnesses.
Sen. Marc Gold, the government’s representative in the Senate, acknowledged that some senators think the bill goes too far, while others think it doesn’t go far enough. But he said, to his mind, that divergence of opinion demonstrates that the bill has struck the right balance.
“The bottom line is that it is a reasonable, prudent proposal that achieves a complex balancing of rights … Bill C-7 is neither too hot, nor too cold, but just the right temperature,” Gold said during Monday’s debate.
Gold further suggested that unelected senators should be cautious about tinkering with the bill, noting it was supported by two-thirds of elected MPs from all parties in the House of Commons, giving it “a strong democratic stamp of approval.”
But Sen. Pierre Dalphond, a former judge who sits in the Progressive Senate Group, argued that the exclusion of those suffering solely from mental illnesses is unconstitutional, violating their right to equal treatment under the law regardless of physical or mental disability.
Dalphond said he believes it’s reasonable to propose a sunset clause to put a time limit on that exclusion, giving the government time to come up with guidelines for providing assisted dying to people with mental illnesses.
And he said he’ll introduce another amendment to specify that the ill-defined concept of mental illness does not include neuro-congnitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.
There is support among senators for referring the bill to the Supreme Court for advice on its constitutionality, both from those who think it’s too restrictive and those who think it’s too permissive.
Sen. Don Plett, leader of the Conservatives in the Senate, questioned why senators are rushing to expand access to what he termed “physician-induced death,” based on “a lower court decision made by one judge in one province” that the government chose not to appeal.
He implored his colleagues to listen to disability rights advocates who have denounced the bill for sending the “harmful and tragic message” that the lives of people with disabilities are not worth living.
Plett argued that extending access before improving palliative care and support services for people with disabilities will make it “easier to die than to live” and doesn’t give vulnerable people a real choice.
Conservative Sen. Denise Batters said it’s “disgraceful” that the government is pushing a bill to expand access to assisted dying in the midst of a pandemic, when vulnerable people are even more “alone, isolated and economically disadvantaged” and with even less access to support services.
She argued that Black, racialized, Indigenous and poor Canadians with disabilities, “people who have been routinely pushed to the margins of our society,” are “crying out to us for help but they don’t want help to die, they want help to live.”
However, Sen. Chantal Petitclerc, a former Paralympian who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate, noted that the court ruling to which the bill is responding was triggered by Nicole Gladu and Jean Truchon, two Quebecers with severe disabilities.
Petitclerc, a member of the Independent Senators Group, said senators can’t ignore the inequalities that exist in society or the lack of support services that can exacerbate suffering.
But she said she believes the government has correctly chosen to permit assisted dying “in order to respect the autonomy of those who choose it freely as a release from intolerable suffering,” rather than prohibit it for all people with disabilities “until all support and all resources are available.”
The Biden administration is set to announce this week that it will reengage with the much-maligned U.N. Human Rights Council that former President Donald Trump withdrew from almost three years ago, U.S. officials said Sunday. The decision reverses another Trump-era move away from multilateral organizations and agreements.
U..S. officials say Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a senior U.S. diplomat in Geneva will announce on Monday that Washington will return to the Geneva-based body as an observer with an eye toward seeking election as a full member. The decision is likely to draw criticism from conservative lawmakers and many in the pro-Israel community.
Trump pulled out of the world body’s main human rights agency in 2018 due to its disproportionate focus on Israel, which has received by far the largest number of critical council resolutions against any country, as well as the number of authoritarian countries among its members and because it failed to meet an extensive list of reforms demanded by then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
In addition to the council’s persistent focus on Israel, the Trump administration took issue with the body’s membership, which currently includes China, Cuba, Eritrea, Russia and Venezuela, all of which have been accused of human rights abuses.
One senior U.S. official said the Biden administration believed the council must still reform but that the best way to promote change is to “engage with it in a principled fashion.” The official said it can be “an important forum for those fighting tyranny and injustice around the world” and the U.S. presence intends to “ensure it can live up to that potential.”
That official and three others familiar with the decision were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly ahead of the announcement, and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Although the U.S. will have only nonvoting observer status on the council through the end of 2021, the officials said the administration intends to seek one of three full member seats — currently held by Austria, Denmark and Italy — from the “Western Europe and other states group” that come up for election later this year.
The U.N. General Assembly makes the final choice in a vote that generally takes place in October every year to fill vacancies in three-year terms at the 47-member-state council.
U.S. engagement with the council and its predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, has been something of a political football between Republican and Democratic administrations for decades. While recognizing its shortcomings, Democratic presidents have tended to want a seat at the table while Republicans have recoiled at its criticism of Israel.
Trump’s withdrawal from the UNHRC, however, was one of a number of U.S. retrenchments from the international community during his four years in office. He also walked away from the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the World Health Organization, U.N. education and cultural organization, UNESCO, and several arms-control treaties. Trump also threatened to withdraw from the International Postal Union and frequently hinted at pulling out of the World Trade Organization.
Since taking office last month, President Joe Biden has rejoined both the Paris accord and the WHO and has signalled interest in returning to the Iran deal as well as UNESCO.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is expected to announce plans Monday to reopen the province following its state of emergency.
A senior government source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter says Ford will announce that the state of emergency declared last month will be allowed to expire as scheduled on Tuesday.
However, the source adds that a stay-at-home order will remain in effect as regions gradually transition back to the government’s colour-coded restrictions system over the next three weeks.
The source says the government will also introduce an “emergency brake” that allows the province’s top doctor to immediately move a region back into lockdown if cases spike.
Ontario has been in lockdown since Boxing Day, and on Jan. 12, the province declared a state of emergency over rising cases of COVID-19.
It also instituted a stay-at-home order, which prohibited people from going out except for essential purposes, such as for exercise or to buy groceries.
Toronto Public Health has confirmed the first cases of the Brazilian and South African variant of the COVID-19 virus in the city.
Officials said on Sunday that a patient who had recently travelled from Brazil has tested positive for the P.1 COVID-19 mutation. They are currently hospitalized.
This also marks the first confirmed case of the Brazilian variant in the province of Ontario.
Health officials also reported the first confirmed case of the B.1.351 mutation, known as the South African variant of the virus. This person has no recent travel history and has had no known contact with anyone who has recently traveled.
Toronto Public Health says there are currently 27 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 variant in the city.
As of Sunday, the province had counted 176 confirmed cases of the variant from the U.K., and one of the variant from South Africa, not including Toronto’s new case.
A single-day snapshot from January found that the variant from the U.K. accounted for 5.5 per cent of all positive COVID-19 cases in the province, and that percentage is expected to rise quickly.
As of last week, the province has been screening all positive cases to see if they can be tied to one of the variants.
Most of the variant cases are in the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, where an outbreak ripped through a Barrie nursing home killing more than half of the residents and an essential caregiver.
Public health officials around the world have raised concerns about new virus variants that are more contagious or resistant to existing vaccines. While viruses mutate constantly, most of the changes cause little concern. But scientists are closely tracking these mutations to make sure they quickly identify variants of concern.
Public health officials are also concerned because the variant first discovered in South Africa contains a mutation of the virus’ characteristic spike protein targeted by existing vaccines. The mutation may mean the vaccines offer less protection against the variant.
The developers of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine say the shot appears to work against the variant detected in Britain late last year which is similar to previously reported results by other vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer and Moderna. Researchers are studying the potential effectiveness of the vaccine against the South Africa variant.
Files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press were used in this report
Tom Brady made his seventh Super Bowl title look familiar – despite moving south to a new team and conference during a pandemic.
Brady threw two touchdown passes to old friend Rob Gronkowski and one to good pal Antonio Brown, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City 31-9 on their home field in Super Bowl 55 on Sunday.
The GOAT (Greatest of all-time) extended his Super Bowl titles’ record in his 10th appearance, his first without Patriots coach Bill Belichick. The 43-year-old Brady broke his own mark for oldest player to win a Super Bowl and joins Hall of Famer Peyton Manning as the only quarterbacks to win one with multiple franchises.
“I’m not making any comparisons,” Brady said. “Experiencing it with this group of guys is amazing.”
Brady was also named the MVP of the game for the fifth time in his career. That moves him past LeBron James and leaves him one behind only Michael Jordan’s 6 for most championship series/game MVP awards won by a player in North American major pro team sports history.
I’m so proud of all these guys. We had a rough November but we came together at the right time. We knew this was gonna happen. We played our best game of the year – Tom Brady
The Buccaneers (15-5) won their second NFL title and first in 18 years while becoming the first team to play the big game at home, capping an unusual and challenging season played through the novel coronavirus. They won three road games as a wild-card team to reach the Super Bowl.
Tampa’s victory prevented Mahomes and the Chiefs (16-3) from becoming the first repeat champions since Brady’s Patriots did it in 2003-04.
Bruce Arians became the oldest coach at age 68 to win the Super Bowl. His mom, 95-year-old Kay Arians, witnessed it in person. Brady, Gronk and defensive co-ordinator Todd Bowles helped Arians get that Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Bowles devised a masterful plan to frustrate Mahomes and shut down the Chiefs, the complete opposite of Kansas City’s 27-24 win in Tampa in Week 12, when the Chiefs jumped to a 17-0 lead in the first quarter. Tyreek Hill had 269 yards receiving and three TDs in that one. He was held to 73 yards on seven catches.
The NFL completed its 269-game season on time without any cancellations, a remarkable accomplishment that required nearly 1 million COVID-19 tests for players and team personnel.
Due to the virus, only 25,000 mask-wearing fans were allowed in, including approximately 7,500 vaccinated health care workers who were given free tickets by the NFL. About 30,000 cardboard cutouts made the stadium look full.
The game also featured a halftime performance by Scarborough-born R&B superstar The Weeknd. The Grammy-winning singer performed a medley of his hits, including “Can’t Feel My Face,” “Earned It” and his most recent chart topper, “Blinding Lights.”
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/02/07/brady-leads-bucs-to-convincing-win-over-chiefs-in-super-bowl-lv/
Ontario is considering cancelling March break in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Speaking on Breakfast Television this morning, Education Minister Stephen Lecce says he hopes to have a decision by next week.
“I’m going to follow the public health advice on this. I’ve sought the opinion of the Chief Medical Officer of Health and if he believes – and the experts believe – it is better to keep kids in school learning, then I will accept that advice,” said Lecce. “At the end of the day folks should not be travelling during March break anyway.”
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/02/04/ford-government-considers-cancelling-march-break-to-curb-covid-spread/
News of the potential spring break cancellation comes a day after Lecce released plans to reopen those schools still closed in the coming weeks.
Schools in Toronto, Peel and York are to reopen on Feb. 16, while those in other public health units where in-person classes haven’t resumed reopen Feb. 8.
Lecce said he will base the March break decision entirely on “public health imperatives.”
But the unions representing the province’s elementary, secondary and Catholic school teachers said mental health should also be considered.
“We are living in unprecedented times that continue to create high levels of stress, fear and anxiety for everyone,” said Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. “We have heard repeatedly that students, families and educators need a break right now.”
He said travel-related concerns should be dealt with in other ways.
Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, believes the minister is just trying to gauge public opinion.
“I fully believe he’s just floating political trial balloons and he truly doesn’t care about the medical advice he gets,” Bischof tells 680 NEWS. “The idea of reducing gatherings, for example, by cancelling March break flies in the face of logic.”
In addition to the mental health concerns, there are some logistical issues at play said Bischof.
Many local collective agreements have a requirement for the number of school days in a year, he said, so if March break is cancelled and no days off are offered in lieu, it could lead to problems.
The government could remedy that by starting the summer break early, which Bischof noted is well within the ministry’s rights.
Jennifer Harris Bialczyk, a Toronto mother of two, says she can see it both ways.
She went from celebrating Lecce’s school reopening announcement with friends over Zoom – “we all had wine,” she said – to wondering whether she’d have to cancel plans to visit her cottage over the spring break.
“I can see it both ways,” she said. “I understand that the cases will likely go up if there is a March break. But I also think the kids, the parents, and the teachers all need a break.”
She said the last month of balancing online learning and her own work has left her exhausted, so she was looking forward to some time off.
NDP education critic Marit Stiles said Lecce’s comments teasing an announcement on March Break’s potential cancellation are unfair to parents and educators who need time to prepare.
“They’re just stringing everyone along, trying to build up some anticipation, but the problem is that it leaves people frustrated, scared,” she said. “Real people have real lives and they need to plan.”
Stiles said students, parents and teachers need the break because weeks of online learning has been stressful for all involved.
“I don’t know what planet (the government) has been on, but this has not been a break for parents, or kids or on staff,” she said. “It has been extraordinarily hard work.”
The federal government has instituted its own policies aimed at preventing travel over the spring break, announcing last week that four major airlines would halt flights from Canada to Mexico and the Caribbean until the end of April.
The provincial government has also introduced mandatory COVID-19 testing for all international arrivals to Ontario, and Ottawa has a similar program ramping up in the coming weeks.
Pet groomers across Ontario can reopen to provide certain services, the province said Thursday as it clarified its pandemic regulations surrounding animal care.
Solicitor General Sylvia Jones’ office said groomers can reopen to provide services necessary to prevent “foreseeable and reasonably imminent” veterinary care.
Groomers can also provide services if an order has been issued to a pet owner under the province’s animal welfare act.
The services must be by appointment-only, through curbside pickup, and groomers are only permitted to take one animal at a time.
Lindsay Buccella, a pet groomer in Stouffville, Ont., said Thursday’s announcement was welcome, although she added that the government needed to specify what type of care might be necessary to prevent a vet visit.
“Every groom is for the welfare of an animal and if they don’t get groomed on a regular basis, they could end up at the vet,” she said.
“This is good news but if they’re going to put these restrictions, they need to specify what they consider an emergency.”
Buccella said she already had clients booked for nail trimming appointments after the government updated its rules. Long dog nails, she noted, can cause permanent skeletal damage if not trimmed.
Pet grooming businesses were ordered closed when a provincial lockdown took effect in late December.
The province had said, however, that pet grooming was allowed when required for an animal’s health and said a vet could provide those services.
Some cities said that the province’s rules led to confusion for businesses and pet owners.
Earlier this week, the Greater Toronto and Hamilton-area mayors and chairs asked the government to clarify the rules.
Mississauga, Ont., Mayor Bonnie Crombie had said her city would not issue fines or take other enforcement action against pet grooming businesses that operate using a curbside pickup system. She had called on the province to amend the rules to clearly permit the services.
Pet groomers had said their businesses help keep animals healthy and noted that vets may not be able to take animals for grooming-related needs because of limited capacity during lockdown.
The Ontario Veterinary Medical Association said some vet clinics have longer wait times for appointments due to a backlog of cases from earlier in the pandemic and COVID-19 safety protocols.
