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April 18, 2022

Today’s coronavirus news: Australia’s ban on cruise ships ends; Easter Sunday marks a return to in-person worship for many

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Sunday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

5:53 p.m.: According to official state numbers, Connecticut has recorded 3,939 positive COVID-19 tests in the past week, most in a seven-day period since early March.

In reality, experts say the true number is larger. Maybe much larger.

At previous stages of the pandemic, the vast majority of positive COVID-19 results came from tests administered by medical professionals and then reported to the Department of Public Health. But now Connecticut residents can purchase a test at a pharmacy and take it in their living room with no requirement that they report positive results anywhere or confirm their results with a medical provider.

That is good news when it comes to convenient testing access but bad news when it comes to tracking results.

“We have to be mindful of the data we are receiving and not receiving,” said Dr. David Banach, hospital epidemiologist at UConn Health. “Relying on [cases] as a primary way to gauge what’s circulating in the community is not as applicable right now.”

A sign outside of Charter Oak Health Center, which is administering vaccines and boosters daily. (Jessica Hill / Special to the Courant)

Official COVID-19 case counts have always underrepresented the true spread of the disease to some degree — as not everyone who gets infected develops symptoms or seeks a test — but experts say this has become especially true during the at-home testing era. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner who has advised Gov. Ned Lamont during the pandemic, said recently he thinks the U.S. is “dramatically undercounting” COVID-19 cases, particularly in the Northeast.

3:55 p.m.: Quebec is reporting a 28-patient jump in COVID-19 hospitalizations Sunday.

The government’s open data portal shows there are 2,159 people in hospital with the disease.

There are 101 patients listed in intensive care, a drop of four patients from Saturday.

According to the open data portal, two more deaths were attributed to the novel coronavirus, for a total of 14,614 since the pandemic began.

The data shows there have been 1,040 new infections confirmed by PCR testing on Saturday, which is limited to higher-risk groups.

People aged 70 and over account for more than 71 per cent of the overall hospitalizations; further details on COVID-19-related hospitalizations and vaccinations will be released Tuesday.

12:20 p.m.: For many U.S. Christians, this weekend marks the first time since 2019 that they will gather in person on Easter Sunday, a welcome chance to celebrate one of the year’s holiest days side by side with fellow congregants.

The pandemic erupted in the country in March 2020, just ahead of Easter, forcing many churches to resort to online or televised worship. Many continued to hold virtual services last spring after a deadly winter wave of the coronavirus and as vaccination campaigns were still ramping up. But this year more churches are opening their doors for Easter services with few COVID-19 restrictions, in line with broader societal trends.

Among them are Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston, which since last June has once again required most churchgoers to attend Mass in person — though those with health risks may still watch remotely, and pastors have been asked to make space for social distancing in churches.

MC Sullivan, chief health care ethicist for the archdiocese, said celebrating Mass communally is important to how Catholics profess their faith. Church attendance has been trending upward, and parishioners are excited to gather again to commemorate Christ’s resurrection.

“It has been quite wonderful to see how well-attended Mass is right now. … It seems to have brought a lot of people back to the idea of what’s important to them,” she said.

While most pandemic restrictions have been lifted, some area parishes are holding Easter Sunday services outside, including a 6 a.m. sunrise Mass near the waterfront in South Boston.

Hundreds of people lit candles in the vast Cathedral of St. Paul, Minnesota, after Archbishop Bernard Hebda blessed the fire and lit the Paschal Candle to open the Easter Vigil service late Saturday.

The century-old cathedral echoed with the singing of the congregation as candles flickered in the darkness. Well past 8 p.m., wide-eyed children fascinated by the little flames and the cantors far outnumbered people wearing masks – the archdiocese rescinded all Covid protocols on April 1, while allowing the faithful and individual parishes to retain precautions if they wishes

10:14 a.m.: Australia’s two-year long ban on cruise ships expires on Sunday, another step toward the rehabilitation of tourism from the damage wrought by the pandemic.

The ban on foreign cruise ships — imposed in March 2020 after a COVID-19 outbreak aboard the Ruby Princess spilled into Sydney once the vessel docked — cost the Australian economy more than A$10 billion ($7.4 billion), the Cruise Lines International Association estimates.

Operators “are preparing for a carefully managed resumption of operations in a sector that previously supported more than 18,000 Australian jobs,” the association said in a statement ahead of the ban’s expiry.

Australia’s states will determine when vessels can enter now the federal ban has run out. Safety steps include vaccination requirements for crew and passengers over 12 years old, as well as mask and COVID-19-testing protocols.

P&O Cruises Australia’s Pacific Explorer will be among the first ships to dock in Sydney Harbour on Monday ahead of a return to service at the end of May.

Before COVID-19, 1.6 million cruise passengers visited Sydney in 2017 and 2018, according to official figures. The pandemic hit cruise ships particularly hard after high-profile outbreaks that led a variety of ports to block access.

Tourism industry bodies say there’s significant pent-up demand for cruises but it remains unclear if the fear of the disease will permanently affect the sector. Travel shares globally have yet to recover the ground lost due to the pandemic and have trailed global equities significantly since the start of 2020.

Australia has relaxed border restrictions this year, relying on high vaccination rates under a strategy of learning to live with the coronavirus.

8:20 a.m. COVID-19 patients can harbour the coronavirus in their feces for months after infection, researchers found, stoking concern that its persistence can aggravate the immune system and cause long COVID symptoms.

In the largest study tracking SARS-CoV-2 RNA in feces and COVID-19 symptoms, scientists at California’s Stanford University found that about half of infected patients shed traces of the virus in their waste in the week after infection and almost 4{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} patients still emit them seven months later. The researchers also linked coronavirus RNA in feces to gastric upsets, and concluded that SARS-CoV-2 likely directly infects the gastrointestinal tract, where it may hide out.

“It raises the question that ongoing infections in hidden parts of the body may be important for long COVID,” said Ami Bhatt, a senior author on the study published online last week in the journal Med, and an associate professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford. Lingering virus might directly invade cells and damage tissues or produce proteins that are provoking the immune system, she said in an interview.

No one knows yet what causes the constellation of post-COVID-19 symptoms, often termed long COVID, that afflict from 5{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} to 80{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of people after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. It’s possible at least four different biological mechanisms lead to distinct conditions or subtypes of long COVID, said Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University.

“Long COVID is likely multiple different diseases,” Iwasaki said last week in an interview in her lab in New Haven, Connecticut. In one of these forms, persistent SARS-CoV-2 may trigger a damaging immune response that leads to ailments that could be quelled with drugs that target the virus, she said.

8:20 a.m. COVID-19 patients can harbor the coronavirus in their feces for months after infection, researchers found, stoking concern that its persistence can aggravate the immune system and cause long COVID symptoms.

In the largest study tracking SARS-CoV-2 RNA in feces and COVID-19 symptoms, scientists at California’s Stanford University found that about half of infected patients shed traces of the virus in their waste in the week after infection and almost 4 per cent patients still emit them seven months later. The researchers also linked coronavirus RNA in feces to gastric upsets, and concluded that SARS-CoV-2 likely directly infects the gastrointestinal tract, where it may hide out.

No one knows yet what causes the constellation of post-COVID-19 symptoms, often termed long COVID, that afflict from 5 per cent to 80 per cent of people after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. It’s possible at least four different biological mechanisms lead to distinct conditions or subtypes of long COVID, said Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University.

“I have heard anecdotally of people recovering from long COVID after antivirals or monoclonals,” said Iwasaki, who wants to collaborate on clinical studies of potential therapies. “I’m really excited at the possibility of testing direct antivirals and monoclonal antibodies” against long COVID, she said.

Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in December, introducing the first COVID-19 treatment taken in pill form. Pfizer doesn’t have any long COVID studies underway, but is assessing their possibility, the drugmaker said in an email.

8:19 a.m. Several businesses and residents have filed suit in state court in Pennsylvania seeking to overturn Philadelphia’s renewed indoor mask mandate scheduled to be enforced beginning Monday in an effort to halt a surge in COVID-19 infections.

The lawsuit, filed in Commonwealth Court on Saturday, said Philadelphia lacks the authority to impose such a mandate.

Philadelphia earlier this week became the first major U.S. city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate after reporting a sharp increase in coronavirus infections, with the city’s top health official saying she wanted to forestall a potential new wave driven by an omicron subvariant.

Attorney Thomas W. King III, who was among those involved in last year’s successful challenge to the statewide mask mandate in schools, said the city’s emergency order went against recommendations of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and “imposed a renegade standard unfound anywhere else in the world.”

The suit accuses city health officials of having “usurped the power and authority” of state lawmakers, the state department of health and the state advisory health board.

8:18 a.m. Australia’s two-year long ban on cruise ships expires on Sunday, another step toward the rehabilitation of tourism from the damage wrought by the pandemic.

The ban on foreign cruise ships — imposed in March 2020 after a COVID outbreak aboard the Ruby Princess spilled into Sydney once the vessel docked — cost the Australian economy more than A$10 billion ($7.4 billion), the Cruise Lines International Association estimates.

P&O Cruises Australia’s Pacific Explorer will be among the first ships to dock in Sydney Harbour on Monday ahead of a return to service at the end of May.

Before COVID, 1.6 million cruise passengers visited Sydney in 2017 and 2018, according to official figures. The pandemic hit cruise ships particularly hard after high-profile outbreaks that led a variety of ports to block access.

Australia has relaxed border restrictions this year, relying on high vaccination rates under a strategy of learning to live with the coronavirus.

8:15 a.m. The Shanghai government urged the city’s elderly residents to make sure they are fully vaccinated and to get booster shots once the city’s lockdown is lifted.

Only 62{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of residents aged 60 or older had received two shots of COVID-related vaccines as of April 15, Wu Jinglei, director of the Shanghai Heath Commission, said at a briefing Sunday. Of these, 38{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} have had booster jabs, Wu said.

The risks from the Omicron variant of coronavirus for unvaccinated elderly people are high, based on the monitoring of domestic and overseas cases, with patients displaying severe, critical and in some cases fatal symptoms, Wu said.

Older people with diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure can get vaccinated as long as they are taking their routine medicines and their symptoms are stable, he said.

Shanghai has reported 16 COVID cases with severe symptoms in the latest outbreak, 15 of whom are aged 70 years or older and most of them are unvaccinated and have “serious” chronic diseases.

City officials recorded 24,820 local COVID-19 infections for Saturday, 21,582 of them asymptomatic. While the case count is still “fairly high,” the ratio of infections detected among potentially risky people has fallen, Wu said.

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April 16, 2022

Coronavirus news and updates for Friday, April 15, 2022

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Friday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

8:54 p.m.: It’s gonna be an egg-stra special day on Monday when the White House Easter Egg Roll returns from a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are expected to welcome some 30,000 kids and their adult chaperones for the egg roll, an egg hunt and other activities.

The annual egg rolling event was canceled by former President Donald Trump in 2020 and by Biden last year due to the pandemic that has killed nearly 1 million Americans.

First Lady Jill Biden, an educator, has dubbed this year’s all-day event the “Egg-ucation Roll,” aides said, turning the South Lawn into a school community with various educational stations.

Besides eggs-treme fun, the all-day event will include a schoolhouse activity area, reading nook, talent show, obstacle course and other exercise stations, and a cafe where kids will learn to make and eat supposedly healthy treats.

The shindig also includes celebs like “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon, singer Ciara and actor/singer Kristin Chenoweth.

More than two dozen costumed characters will roam the grounds, including Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, the Racing Presidents mascots for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball, Rosita and Cookie Monster from “Sesame Street” and Snoopy and Charlie Brown, among others.

8 p.m.: After a sustained pandemic-induced dip in air travel, Canadians are slowly starting to board flights again. International arrivals are up compared to last year, Statistics Canada data shows, although still significantly below pre-pandemic levels.

While people are on the move, the country is staring down a sixth wave of COVID-19 infections — driven by the BA. 2 variant spreads and the lifting of public health measures.

System-wide decisions, from mask mandates to access to testing, have a significant impact on overall safety, said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) at the University of Saskatchewan. These policies also reduce the chance that Canadian travellers will take the virus elsewhere.

Yet travellers can still make the best of the tools at their disposal to keep themselves and others safe. Speaking to the Star, Rasmussen — who is about to attend a work conference in Portugal — shared her advice on how to navigate travel in the age of Omicron.

Click here to read more of this story from the Star’s Sara Mojtahedzadeh.

7:22 p.m.: The 75-year-old Republican said in an announcement late Friday he was diagnosed by his personal physician after experiencing mild symptoms such as a runny nose, head ache, body aches and a sore throat.

DeWine was administered a monoclonal antibody treatment, which is designed to fight the infection. He said he is following the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocol and quarantining.

The governor’s office said First Lady Fran DeWine was experiencing no symptoms and has tested negative. Both the governor and his wife have received two coronavirus vaccines and a booster.

DeWine’s diagnosis comes just 18 days before Ohio’s May 3 primary, in which he faces two Republican challengers, and just eight days before former President Donald Trump plans an Ohio rally.

It was unclear whether his diagnosis would affect DeWine’s attendance at the rally, or if he would have attended in any case. He had previous plans to attend a celebration of the 200th birthday of President Ulysses S. Grant, an Ohio native, on that day.

DeWine tested positive for COVID-19 once before, in 2020, before testing negative later the same day. Those conflicting results came just before the governor was to meet with Trump, then the president, in Cleveland.

4:55 p.m.: Yet again, the U.S. is trudging into what could be another COVID-19 surge, with cases rising nationally and in most states after a two-month decline.

One big unknown? “We don’t know how high that mountain’s gonna grow,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.

No one expects a peak nearly as high as the last one, when the contagious omicron version of the coronavirus ripped through the population.

But experts warn that the coming wave – caused by a mutant called BA.2 that’s thought to be about 30 per cent more contagious – will wash across the nation. They worry that hospitalizations, which are already ticking up in some parts of the Northeast, will rise in a growing number of states in the coming weeks. And the case wave will be bigger than it looks, they say, because reported numbers are vast undercounts as more people test at home without reporting their infections or skip testing altogether.

2:02 p.m. A hospital in western Quebec is suspending its obstetrics services for the holiday weekend due to a lack of staff.

The health authority for the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region says the service at the hospital in Ville-Marie is suspended until Monday at 8 a.m. due to an unforeseen staffing issue.

The Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue says on Facebook that it has reached out to women who are affected by the closure, and those giving birth will be redirected to another hospital about 130 kilometres away.

The health authority also announced on Thursday that emergency services at the Témiscaming-Kipawa health facility would be closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday night from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.

Quebec’s health minister has warned that the province’s health services are looking at a difficult few weeks ahead as they struggle with a sixth wave of COVID-19 coupled with a rise in influenza and other viruses.

While officials did not say what caused the closures in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the province has said about 13,000 health workers are off the job due to COVID-19.

1:08 p.m. Los Angeles County on Friday ended its order to quarantine asymptomatic people exposed to the coronavirus.

The rule change means anyone — even someone not vaccinated for COVID-19 or up-to-date with a booster shot — who is exposed to an infected person no longer needs to stay home for at least five days to see whether they will test positive or become sick, provided they remain symptom-free.

But unlike the California Department of Public Health, which universally relaxed its quarantine recommendations for the public earlier this month, L.A. County has established a few conditions for waiving the waiting period.

The county will require, not merely recommend, that people who were in close contact with an infected person “wear a highly protective mask around others, especially indoors, for a total of 10 days after the last contact with a person infected” with the coronavirus, and get tested within three to five days after their last exposure to the infected person.

Anyone who lives or works in L.A. County is subject to that masking order.

Someone is considered exposed to the coronavirus if they share the same indoor airspace — like a home, clinic waiting room or airplane — with an infected person during his or her contagious period for at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period.

12:46 p.m. Yet again, the U.S. is trudging into what could be another COVID-19 surge, with cases rising nationally and in most states after a two-month decline.

One big unknown? “We don’t know how high that mountain’s gonna grow,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.

No one expects a peak nearly as high as the last one, when the contagious omicron version of the coronavirus ripped through the population.

But experts warn that the coming wave – caused by a mutant called BA.2 that’s thought to be about 30 per cent more contagious – will wash across the nation and push up hospitalizations in a growing number of states in the coming weeks. And the case wave will be bigger than it looks, they say, because reported numbers are vast undercounts as more people test at home without reporting their infections or skip testing altogether.

At the height of the previous omicron surge, reported daily cases reached into the hundreds of thousands. On April 14, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose to 39,521, up from 30,724 two weeks earlier, according to data from Johns Hopkins collected by The Associated Press.

11:41 a.m. Starting Monday, Minneapolis students will no longer have to wear masks at school or on buses, the school district said Thursday as it announced changes to its COVID-19 protocols.

The news came two days after St. Paul’s school board voted 6-1 to change the mask policy for that district, removing the mandate and allowing students and faculty to choose whether or not to wear a face covering in school buildings.

Besides dropping its mask mandate, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) will discontinue universal contract tracing, officials said. That means families may not be notified if someone in their student’s class tests positive for COVID-19.

District officials also said that beginning Monday, fully vaccinated students and staff will no longer be required to isolate after COVID-19 exposure and the quarantine time for unvaccinated students and adults in the schools will drop from 10 days to five days.

10:27 a.m. A Toronto public school board committee that advocates on behalf of students with special needs wants to bring back mandatory masking and vaccination for those who work with medically fragile children.

The Special Education Advisory Committee has written to the province’s top doctor requesting permission for the board to reintroduce masking rules and its vaccination policy at congregated schools that serve students with complex special needs, many of whom have multiple disabilities.

“Recent changes to COVID-19 safety measures, specifically regarding masking and vaccination requirements, have put these students at great risk of contracting the virus,” say SEAC members in a letter to the chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore. “The COVID-19 virus poses great risks for any of these students, as it may exacerbate existing symptoms of their already complex disabilities and medical fragilities.”

Read the full story from the Star’s Isabel Teotonio

5:58 a.m.: Small business owners have made a plea to the federal finance minister to consider more help paying off their pandemic-related debts as the sixth wave of COVID-19 causes customers to stay home and sales to fall.

The request is one Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has faced repeatedly in recent days during a cross-country post-budget tour.

Her response has been that emergency measures are no longer needed with the crisis passed, the economy running hot and the government needing to tighten its fiscal belt.

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said underneath the headline economic numbers only two in five of his members report being back to normal sales.

He said more are worried about the impact on revenues and their ability to repay loans with people staying home despite provinces removing public health restrictions.

His members put those concerns to Freeland during a webinar on the budget and Kelly said he walked away believing the finance minister heard their concerns.

The budget doesn’t include any further extensions of emergency benefit programs that will come to a close on May 7, but Freeland told those on the webinar, “I hear you,” when asked about debt relief, adding a moment later, “let’s keep on talking.”

Thursday, 9:35 p.m.: California is sticking with its coronavirus vaccine mandate for schoolchildren, but it won’t happen until at least the summer of 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration announced Thursday.

Last year, California was the first state to announce it would require all schoolchildren to receive the coronavirus vaccine. But it hasn’t happened yet because Newsom said he was waiting for regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to give final approval to the vaccine for school-aged children.

At the time, Newsom estimated the mandate would take effect for the start of the 2022-23 school year. But while federal regulators have authorized use of the coronavirus vaccine for children as young as 5 in an emergency, it has still not given final approval to anyone younger than 16.

As the calendar inches closer to the fall, school administrators had worried they would not have enough time to implement the vaccine mandate.

“So based on these two facts — we don’t have full FDA approval, and we recognize the implementation challenges that schools and school leaders would face — that we are not moving to have a vaccine requirement for schools in this coming academic year and no sooner than July 2023,” California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in an interview.

Read Thursday’s coronavirus news.

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April 4, 2022

Coronavirus news and updates for Sunday, April 3, 2022

The hottest coronavirus news from Canada and all-around the globe Sunday. This file will be updated in the course of the working day. World wide web links to lengthier tales if available.

11:45 a.m.: Ontario noted 10 additional deaths due to COVID-19 and 3,077 new conditions on Sunday, a lessen of 4.8 for each cent in new bacterial infections from the prior day.

Specified new provincial restrictions about testing that came into outcome on Dec. 31, 2021, case counts are not thought of an precise evaluation of how popular COVID-19 is ideal now.

Due to “server maintenance,” the province didn’t update data on vaccinations and COVID-19 in hospitals on Sunday.

Meanwhile, 1 additional resident in a very long-term care has died for a total of 4,420 due to the fact the pandemic started.

10 a.m.: Ontario is coming into a sixth wave of COVID-19 with couple remaining community overall health steps and specialists say now is the time for a renewed vaccination technique aimed at boosting third-dose uptake, photographs for little ones and planning for wider fourth doses.

When initial and 2nd doses turned obtainable, Ontario — and Canada at big — was the envy of the planet in how immediately the inhabitants obtained vaccinated, mentioned Dr. Fahad Razak, an internist and member of the province’s science advisory table.

But while 91 for each cent of Ontarians 12 and older have gained two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, only about 60 per cent have acquired three.

9 a.m.: A 60-year-previous gentleman allegedly had himself vaccinated from COVID-19 dozens of times in Germany in purchase to market cast vaccination cards with serious vaccine batch numbers to folks not wanting to get vaccinated on their own.

The guy from the jap Germany metropolis of Magdeburg, whose identify was not introduced in line with German privacy guidelines, is explained to have acquired up to 90 photographs from COVID-19 at vaccination facilities in the jap state of Saxony for months until eventually criminal law enforcement caught him previously this month, the German news agency dpa documented Sunday.

7:57 a.m.: COVID-19 instances in China’s biggest metropolis of Shanghai are still mounting as millions continue being isolated at residence below a sweeping lockdown.

Health and fitness officers on Sunday described 438 verified scenarios detected above the prior 24 hrs, along with 7,788 asymptomatic cases. Each figures ended up up a bit from the working day in advance of.

Whilst modest by the requirements of some nations around the world, the day by day scenario quantities are some of the most significant because the virus was initial detected in the central metropolis of Wuhan in late 2019.

Shanghai with its 26 million men and women very last week began a two-stage lockdown, with residents of the eastern Pudong segment meant to be permitted to leave their residences Friday, whilst their neighbours in the western Puxi section underwent their own 4-day isolation interval.

Regardless of that assurance, hundreds of thousands in Pudong keep on to be confined to their properties amid grievances over food deliveries and the availability of drugs and health expert services.

Notices shipped to citizens mentioned they ended up demanded to self-exam for COVID-19 every day and choose safety measures together with donning masks at property and avoiding call with spouse and children customers — actions not commonly enforced due to the fact the early times of the pandemic.

Read Saturday’s coronavirus information.

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March 23, 2022

Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reports 639 people hospitalized with COVID-19, 179 in ICU; Spain to enter new era without isolation for mild COVID

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Tuesday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

8:00 p.m.: With Ontario partway through its first week without mask mandates and a lack of widespread provincial testing, you may be wondering about the COVID-19 spread in your community.

In the absence of any official public database of COVID signals in the GTA’s sewage, the Toronto Star brings you its own COVID wastewater signal map to give you a sense as to whether cases are increasing, decreasing or remaining stable in your area.

The Star’s signal map uses data sourced from each GTA public health unit into one location, showing trends in sewersheds or wastewater catchment areas for each treatment plant across the region.

Read the full interactive story here: Is COVID surging or declining in the GTA? Use our map to see wastewater trends for your area

7:30 p.m.: The Health Ministry says there have been no more deaths related to COVID-19 in British Columbia.

B.C. reported 254 hospitalizations on Tuesday, a slight drop from Monday when there were 271 people in hospital.

It says 48 people were in intensive care.

No new outbreaks have been declared in health-care facilities since Monday, and three others have ended.

That leaves five facilities with ongoing outbreaks across the health-care system.

The government says 91 per cent of eligible people aged 12 and up have had their second dose of a vaccine and 57.1 per cent of those have had a third dose.

5:00 p.m.: As several countries report an uptick in COVID-19 cases partly blamed on a more contagious version of the Omicron variant, the question becomes whether Canada’s next wave will be a surge or a ripple.

The confluence of easing COVID-19 protocols and the rise of BA.2, a sublineage of the Omicron variant, is complicating the epidemiological forecast for spring, experts say.

While most agree that Canada’s immunization rates should blunt the impacts of the so-called “stealth” subvariant, some worry that decreased public health vigilance could clear a path for BA.2 to drive up infections and hospitalizations.

Canada’s chief public health officer suggested last week that the country should be shielded from the worst of the COVID-19 resurgence that’s roiling regions abroad, instead predicting a spring “blip” as public health measures are lifted.

While evidence suggests that BA.2 is more transmissible than its Omicron predecessor, the subvariant is spreading at a relatively slow rate in Canada, said Dr. Theresa Tam.

It doesn’t appear to to cause more severe illness than other variants, she said, but international data suggests BA.2 targets people who aren’t protected by vaccination or previous exposure to the Omicron variant.

That means Canada’s high immunization uptake — with 81 per cent of the population considered fully vaccinated — should keep hospitalizations at manageable levels even if cases rise, said Tam.

But Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Alberta, warned that the risks of BA.2 could be unevenly distributed across Canada.

Omicron reinfection appears to be rare, Saxinger said, so regions that were hit hard by the BA.1 surge may fare better than those where the variant hasn’t been circulating.

“I think it will be very variable between even cities, communities and provinces, and overall across the country,” she said. “In places where they haven’t had a lot of infection recently, I think there is a bit more risk that this highly transmissible variant could make a bigger wave.”

Another factor to consider is uptake of third vaccine doses, which do a lot “heavy lifting” in protecting against severe outcomes from Omicron infection, said Saxinger. Federal numbers suggest that roughly 46 per cent of the population has received a booster shot.

What’s less clear to Saxinger is whether reimposing COVID-19 rules would do much to curb BA.2’s spread, noting that the subvariant has gained steam in places with strict public health measures.

“I think there’s a wide playing field in between giving up, which I don’t think is the right answer, and doing some sort of draconian lockdown on an early signal.”

Caroline Colijn, a mathematician and epidemiologist at Simon Fraser University, isn’t convinced that BA.2 will register as just a “blip” in Canada’s COVID-19 trajectory.

The Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematics for Evolution, Infection and Public Health said her modelling suggests that Canada is well positioned to weather an uptick in transmission driven by either BA.2 or relaxing COVID-19 restrictions independently, but the combination of the two could cause problems.

“We can be very resilient to a rise in transmission, and BA.2 will give us a rise in transmission. But reducing our measures and removing our protections will also give us another rise in transmission at the same time,” Colijn said.

“I think we are resilient to some increase in transmission. But I think we will probably see a surge from these two increases in transmission arriving at the same time.”

Of particular concern to Colijn is how BA.2 could affect those who are most vulnerable to severe COVID-19 outcomes, such as people who are older or immunocompromised.

These groups were prioritized for early boosters in many parts of the country, Colijn noted, and so the immunity provided by these doses are more likely to have waned in the months since.

As many provinces have restricted access to testing, Colijn said, we may not have the data we need to measure to increased COVID-19 transmission before hospitalizations tick up, at which point, it’ll be too late to contain the situation.

“I think we should be going into this with our eyes open and watching carefully,” she said.

2:45 p.m. Spanish health authorities are moving closer to normalizing life in coexistence with COVID-19, by scrapping mandatory quarantines — from next week — for those infected with the virus but showing no or mild symptoms of the disease.

Under current regulations, seven days of isolation are mandatory for anybody who tests positive for the coronavirus.

Starting March 28, free COVID-19 tests will only be conducted on high-risk groups, at health facilities and nursing homes, and on patients with the worse conditions, Spain’s Health Ministry said Tuesday.

It said the decision was taken by the country’s Commission on Public Health.

Amid high levels of vaccination, the rate of coronavirus contagion remains still above 400 new cases per 100,000 residents in 14 days, a high-risk level but way down from the mid-January record. Fueled by the omicron variant, the two-week variable surged then above 3,400 new cases per 100,000 residents.

Since the first case was identified in early 2020, Spain has officially reported 11.3 million infections and just over 100,000 confirmed deaths, although the accuracy of record-keeping has varied during the pandemic.

2 p.m. (updated) White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that she is positive again for COVID-19 and will not accompany President Joe Biden to Europe this week for urgent meetings with world counterparts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden tested negative on Tuesday, she said.

Psaki’s reinfection follows recent positive tests for Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband and Ireland’s prime minister, who was in the nation’s capital last week for a series of in-person celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day with Biden and other officials.

The scares happened as the Biden administration tries to help the United States ease back into its pre-pandemic patterns, even as cases climb in Europe due to a new, more contagious variant of the omicron strain of the coronavirus.

Psaki tweeted that she took a laboratory test for COVID-19 as part of her preparation for the trip, which gets underway on Wednesday, and was later notified of a positive result.

She said she had two “socially distanced meetings” with Biden on Monday and that he is not considered a “close contact” under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Psaki tweeted and released a statement a short time before she was scheduled to step into the White House press room for her daily briefing, accompanied by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who was joining her to discuss the trip.

After a brief delay, White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher entered and introduced Sullivan to a waiting White House press corps.

“Obviously, we’ve had some last-minute adjustments to the briefing, which is why I’m up here today,” Meagher said before he read a statement on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s performance at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He took no questions.

Sullivan made a statement and spent about 16 minutes answering questions about the trip.

Psaki said she will follow CDC guidance and not accompany Biden to Brussels, where he will attend a series of meetings with European and other world leaders on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Biden also plans to visit Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine and has taken in more than 2 million Ukrainians fleeing warfare following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

Psaki said she has experienced only mild symptoms of COVID-19 and credited being vaccinated against the disease. Under White House COVID-19 protocols, she said she will work from home and return to work at the end of a five-day isolation period and a negative test.

It’s not unheard of for someone who has had COVID-19 to become infected again. Reinfections became more likely after the super-contagious omicron variant emerged, even among the fully vaccinated, but those cases tend to be very mild.

As coronavirus cases plummeted around the United States this year, and states and localities dropped their mask-wearing requirements, the White House did as well. As of March 1, neither White House staff nor reporters were required to wear face masks inside the building.

But some scientists are beginning to worry that the omicron variant known as BA.2 could soon push up COVID-19 cases in the United States, after months of case declines and people taking off their masks and returning to indoor spaces.

Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff tested positive on March 15, though he is not considered a close contact of the president. Harris has continued to test negative.

The following day, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin learned he had tested positive for COVID-19 while attending a gala with U.S. leaders, including Biden. Martin was due to appear with Biden at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day but instead made those appearances on video.

This is the second time that COVID-19 has forced Psaki to bow out of accompanying Biden abroad. She sat out last fall’s trip to Rome and Glasgow, Scotland, after learning at the last minute that she had tested positive.

12:40 p.m. Ontarians could again show their faces in stores, restaurants and classrooms on Monday as the province lifted COVID-19 mask mandates in most settings.

But one exemption to the rule change is public transit, where riders can’t officially ditch their masks for another five weeks.

The province says keeping the mask requirement on transit will protect the health of vulnerable riders, but with pandemic-weary residents being told it’s safe to unmask almost everywhere else, some experts are worried passengers will soon stop following the rules.

Read the full story from the Star’s Ben Spurr

12:24 p.m. Quebec is reporting seven more deaths attributed to COVID-19 and a 41-patient increase in the number of hospitalizations Tuesday.

The Health Department says 1,043 people are hospitalized with the disease after 100 patients were admitted and 59 discharged.

Authorities say there are 46 patients listed in intensive care, a decrease of two from the previous day.

Officials say 1,383 people tested positive for COVID-19 based on PCR testing, which is limited to certain high-risk groups. They say 3,804 doses of vaccine were administered on Monday, including more than 2,500 booster shots.

11:10 a.m. In an attempt to focus on pandemic recovery, a COVID-19 clinic operated at a hospital in Mississauga will be suspending operations at the end of the month.

The vaccination clinic at Credit Valley Hospital will no longer run past March 25, according to an announcement shared by Trillium Health Partners (THP).

Residents can still access their first, second or third dose from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on the 25th through online bookings, said THP.

10:35 a.m. (updated) Ontario is reporting 179 people in ICU due to COVID-19 and 639 in hospital overall testing positive for COVID-19, according to its latest report released Tuesday morning.

Of the people hospitalized, 46.3 per cent were admitted for COVID-19 and 53.8 per cent were admitted for other reasons but have since tested positive. For the ICU numbers, 71.2 per cent were admitted for COVID-19 and 28.9 per cent were admitted for other reasons but have since tested positive.

The numbers represent a 1.1 per cent decrease in the ICU COVID-19 count and a 16 per cent increase in hospitalizations overall. 30 per cent of the province’s 2,343 adult ICU beds remain available for new patients.

Read the full story from the Star’s Isaac Phan Nay

10:30 a.m. Pfizer said on Tuesday that it has agreed to sell up to 4 million treatment courses of its COVID-19 pills for use in 95 lower-income countries that are home to about 4 billion people, with the first supplies expected to become available next month.

The company’s supply agreement with UNICEF, the arm of the United Nations, covers all countries classified as low- or lower-middle-income, as well as some upper-middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world.

The pills will most likely be the first COVID drugs available in some of the poorest parts of the world. But they are enough for only a small fraction of the patients who could benefit.

8:30 a.m. Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal has tested positive for COVID-19 and gone into isolation, disrupting his team’s preparations for friendly internationals against Denmark and Germany.

The Dutch soccer association said in a statement that the 70-year-old Van Gaal tested positive on Tuesday morning.

Van Gaal’s assistants, Danny Blind, Henk Fraser and Frans Hoek, will stand in for the coach as the Netherlands squad prepares to play Denmark on Saturday and Germany on Tuesday. Both matches are at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam.

8:15 a.m. Almost 1 million people in the United States have died of COVID-19 in the past two years, but the full impact of the pandemic’s collateral damage is still being tallied. Now a new study reports that the number of Americans who died of alcohol-related causes increased precipitously during the first year of the pandemic, as routines were disrupted, support networks frayed and treatment was delayed.

The startling report comes amid a growing realization that COVID-19’s toll extends beyond the number of lives claimed directly by the disease to the excess deaths caused by illnesses left untreated and a surge in drug overdoses, as well as to social costs such as educational setbacks and the loss of parents and caregivers.

Numerous reports have suggested that Americans drank more to cope with the stress of the pandemic. Binge drinking increased, as did emergency room visits for alcohol withdrawal. But the new report found that the number of alcohol-related deaths, including from liver disease and accidents, soared, rising to 99,017 in 2020 from 78,927 in 2019 — an increase of 25 per cent in the number of deaths in one year.

7:10 a.m. A busted elevator at Cedarbrook Community Centre has dealt a losing hand to bridge-playing seniors who can’t climb the stairs.

After a two-year pause due to COVID-19, members of the Mid-Scarborough Bridge Club are excited at the prospect of shuffling up and dealing, with the lifting of restrictions and health advice that grounded its players.

The club began in 2018 and grew to 150 members — mostly seniors — with dozens showing up at a time for twice-weekly sessions in a large, second-floor room at Cedarbrook, on Eastpark Boulevard, until the pandemic.

Read the full story from Jack Lakey

6:30 a.m. Councillor Joe Cressy, the chair of Toronto’s Board of Health, says the city has reached a new milestone with 89 per cent of residents 12 and older now double vaccinated.

“Toronto is already a world leader in vaccination rates, and we’re not slowing down. We’re scaling up our equity-focused strategy to make vaccines accessible for all Torontonians,” he wrote in a tweet.

6:20 a.m. As Suri Weinberg-Linsky wandered the aisles of her small, west-end book shop Monday, she was pleasantly surprised: Customers were still wearing masks.

“I haven’t had to remind a single person today that they need to wear a mask. Everyone’s had one on when they come in, and I’ve been here since 10:30 (a.m.),” said Weinberg-Linsky, owner of Squibb’s Books and Stationery, Toronto’s oldest bookstore.

On the first day that Ontario’s province-wide mask mandate was lifted, Weinberg-Linsky was one of several business owners insisting customers and staff still wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Elsewhere, business owners, staff and customers were trying to strike a balance, partly to avoid the heated arguments which took place when mask mandates were first introduced. Retailers, gyms, movie theatres, restaurants and bars are now allowed to have customers and staff mask-free. Many, including Walmart, Cineplex, IKEA and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, have made masking voluntary.

Read the full story from the Star’s Josh Rubin

6:17 a.m. The Omicron subvariant BA.2 is continuing to gain ground in the U.S., according to COVID-19 tests sequenced over the last two weeks. Helix, a San Diego-based genomics firm, estimates that 50 per cent to 70 per cent of all COVID cases in the country are BA.2.

6:17 a.m. Japan’s government lifted quasi-state of emergency measures in Tokyo and other regions across the country, bringing to an end steps introduced in early January as cases continue to tumble. Infections peaked in Tokyo in early February. Bars and restaurants, which were subject to requests to close early, will resume normal opening hours from today.

6:16 a.m. China should stick to its strict Covid Zero strategy, the country’s top virus expert said, hours after Hong Kong set out a plan for easing its most stringent curbs. The comments from Liang Wannian, a seasoned epidemiologist who has overseen China’s response since the beginning of the pandemic, came as Shanghai saw a record number of cases for a second straight day. China added 4,594 local cases overall on Monday.

6:15 a.m. Health officials in South Korea have instructed crematories to burn more bodies per day and funeral homes to add more refrigerators to store the dead as families struggle with funeral arrangements amid a rise in COVID-19 deaths.

The country has been dealing with a massive coronavirus outbreak driven by the fast-moving Omicron variant, which has compromised a once robust pandemic response and is driving up hospitalizations and fatalities.

Officials have already allowed the 60 crematories across country to burn for longer hours starting last week, which raised their combined capacity from around 1,000 to 1,400 cremations per day.

But that hasn’t been enough to meaningfully ease the backlog of bodies waiting to be cremated in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half of South Korea’s 52 million people and the centre of its COVID-19 outbreak. The backlog has also trickled down to funeral homes at hospitals and other facilities, where families have struggled to make funeral arrangements because of the longer wait for cremations.

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March 21, 2022

Coronavirus news and updates for Sunday, March 20, 2022

The latest coronavirus information from Canada and around the globe Sunday. This file will be up to date all through the working day. Website links to more time stories if readily available.

4:51 p.m.: Toddlers and young children youthful than 5 were being hospitalized with coronavirus at significantly increased rates during the newest U.S. surge, when the really transmissible omicron variant was dominant, when compared with previously intervals in the pandemic, in accordance to the Centers for Condition Management and Avoidance.

Hospitalizations of these kids were being about five instances better for the duration of the omicron surge, among Dec. 19 and Feb. 19, than for the duration of the time period when the delta variant was dominant, in between June 27 and Dec. 18.

Fees of admission to intense treatment also rose substantially among the young young children, reaching a peak Jan. 8.

Young children of coloration youthful than 5 wound up in hospitals at disproportionate charges. Only one-3rd of the youngsters have been white, when 28 for every cent had been Hispanic, and 23 per cent were being Black. Hispanic men and women signify 18 for every cent of the population, and Black Americans make up 13 for each cent. (Six percent of the hospitalizations of children young than 5 of were being among Asian or other Pacific Islander young children, about the similar as their representation in the populace.)

Authorities say kids of shade are infected at larger fees due to the fact they are extra possible to have moms and dads who work in community-facing work opportunities and far more probable to dwell in poverty and in multigenerational households.

Though hospitalization premiums for younger children are however somewhat lower, compared with the costs between more mature Americans, the virus poses specific hazards to youthful small children and especially to toddlers.

Infants 6 months aged and more youthful had been the most susceptible, symbolizing nearly fifty percent of the hospitalizations between youthful youngsters through the omicron time period. They have been hospitalized at charges about 6 situations as superior at the peak of the omicron surge, in comparison with the peak of the delta wave. Two infants died, the CDC discovered.

1:46 p.m.: A southern Ontario university board is sticking to its approach to extend its mask mandate beyond the provincial one particular, even after the government instructed it to fall the general public overall health evaluate.

In a assertion launched Friday night, the Hamilton-Wentworth District University Board stated it would implement mask-carrying until eventually April 1, irrespective of the province lifting mandates in most indoor settings starting Monday.

“Supporting employees and families in the course of this phased tactic and time of transition is our priority. We are reminding workers and students to wear a mask right up until April 1 and to exercise their alternative by finishing the mask exemption process, if desired,” board chair Dawn Danko claimed in the statement.

She launched the assertion in response to a letter despatched by Education and learning Minister Stephen Lecce on Friday.

The authorities says the board has no lawful authority to mandate masks in the absence of a directive from a general public wellness unit.

In his letter, Lecce reiterated factors made by the province’s top rated doctor.

“Ontario now has equally the prevention and reaction equipment required to regulate the affect of COVID-19,” the letter reads, stating the province is now capable to clear away “many of the crisis actions that have been in location in excess of the earlier two yrs.”

The letter mentioned that some community well being actions will continue to be in universities, these as obligatory COVID-19 self-screening for staff members and learners, air flow updates and enhanced air top quality procedures.

1:42 p.m.: A likely rise in U.S. COVID-19 situations probably won’t sum to a total-scale surge or prompt a renewal of popular restrictions, a single of President Joe Biden’s top advisers claimed.

“The base line is we possible will see an uptick in scenarios, as we’ve observed in the European nations, significantly the U.K.,” Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief professional medical adviser, reported on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “Hopefully we will not see a surge. I really do not believe we will.”

The BA.2 subvariant of omicron is driving up instances in Europe and Asia, notably in Hong Kong, and now accounts for about 30{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of infections in the U.S, the place indoor-mask and vaccine demands have mainly been rolled back again.

Although the U.S. Facilities for Ailment Management and Avoidance has argued that the U.S. demands to be organized to resume actions this sort of as necessitating masks in indoor public areas, Fauci said, “right now, at this place, I don’t see that.”

U.S. scenarios, hospitalizations and deaths continue to drop. BA.2 is about 50{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} a lot more transmissible than the first pressure of omicron, but it doesn’t induce a lot more severe sickness or evade immunity from vaccinations or an earlier infection, Fauci explained.

Fauci and U.S. Surgeon Standard Vivek Murthy urged Congress to go a stalled package deal of new COVID-19 relief. The White Household has sought $22.5 billion in funding, warning that it will shortly have to wind down systems and just can’t obtain much more therapeutic treatment plans.

11:30 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 182 individuals in intense treatment because of to COVID-19 and 551 in medical center overall testing good for the virus, in accordance to its most up-to-date report unveiled Sunday early morning.

The figures symbolize a 1.6 for each cent decrease in the ICU COVID-19 depend and a 10 for every cent lower in hospitalizations all round. 30-a person for each cent of the province’s 2,343 grownup ICU beds continue to be out there for new individuals.

Specified new provincial laws all around testing that took effect Dec. 31, 2021, situation counts — reported at 1,680 on Sunday, down 19.1 per cent from the prior working day — are also not regarded as an accurate assessment of how common COVID-19 is suitable now.

Three new fatalities had been noted in the most up-to-date figures.

Go through the entire tale by the Star’s Erin LeBlanc.

10:30 a.m.: Masks will no extended be aspect of the necessary costume code in most Ontario general public spaces appear Monday, as the government turns the community overall health evaluate into an personal option.

Weeks right after the province lifted evidence-of-vaccination guidelines and ability restrictions, face coverings won’t be required in colleges, retail settings and other areas.

Hospitals, very long-expression care properties and general public transit and some other regions will keep masks until eventually the conclude of April, when the province aims to roll again all remaining community wellness policies.

Provincial politicians and leading wellbeing officials say COVID-19 indicators have improved enough to remove mask procedures, which have also been lifted in other jurisdictions throughout Canada and about the world.

Some are celebrating the alter, but other Ontarians keep on being wary of the virus hazard – as very well as a lack of details on instances due to the fact the province stopped prevalent PCR screening – and say they plan to keep masking following Monday.

Lisa Lam stated she will continue to keep donning a mask at her retail career.

“There’s no freaking way I’m likely to improve my thoughts about it,” she claimed exterior a Toronto buying mall. “I believe it is way way too quickly.”

Dr. Kieran Moore, the province’s top health practitioner, has said the true number of instances is near to 10 periods higher than the everyday scenario counts, which experienced a 7-working day average of 1,821 as of Friday. The province’s pro science advisers claimed last 7 days that there are in between 15,000 and 20,000 circumstances in the province each day.

7:52 a.m.: As Nova Scotia prepares to lifts its mask mandate for most indoor general public spaces Monday, the province’s main health-related officer of overall health is warning that it is not a signal the pandemic is more than.

Dr. Robert Strang wishes people to know that there is “still a great deal of virus around” and that they ought to continue on to practise several of the general public well being measures that have been in location about the previous two several years and are now voluntary.

“We continue to strongly propose that persons proceed to dress in masks, specially in indoor general public spots,” Strang explained in an interview very last week. “That does not alter, irrespective of whether it’s mandated or not.”

According to info unveiled late past week, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 remains extremely active in the province, ensuing in a steady hospitalization price and 120 fatalities due to the fact the variant to start with appeared in December.

7:51 a.m.: Buckhorn Maplefest organizers are optimistic about after again giving its maple sugar bush pageant future 12 months, just after looking at it cancelled for three decades in a row now owing to COVID-19.

The McLean loved ones designed the “difficult” choice to terminate this year’s party, stated Erin McLean, simply because of the uncertainty bordering the pandemic when organizing commenced for it in December.

“It normally takes a ton of time and effort and hard work to set up the festival so we truly had to make that phone in advance of there was any converse of lifting limitations back again when factors have been even even worse than they are now,” she mentioned.

“It’s a ton of time and hard work and investment and it is just really hard to do all of that perform and not know how it’s heading to pan out, specially due to the fact we’d have to fully revamp the competition to make it as secure as we want it to be for everybody to appear out. It just was not in the playing cards this year.”

She explained they are hoping for a superior maple year this yr. In early March they began gathering sap and boiling it down on the McLean farm’s sugar bush south of Buckhorn to make maple syrup to market at neighborhood farmers marketplaces and straight from their farm.

Sunday 7:49 a.m.: Hong Kong’s leader mentioned Sunday that the authorities would look at lifting rigorous social distancing measures as new COVID-19 bacterial infections in the city continued trending downward.

“I wouldn’t promise now that there’s place for adjustment,” Main Govt Carrie Lam explained. “But subsequent a critique, we have a duty to account for the findings in this assessment and the route we will just take.”

Hong Kong is in the middle of a substantial outbreak, recording above 1 million whole circumstances in the town of 7.4 million. The town has been strike really hard, with mortuaries full as they try out to cope with a superior number of fatalities. Hong Kong has so far refrained from a strict town-extensive lockdown like people that China often imposes to manage the spread of the virus.

Read through Saturday’s coronavirus information.

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March 20, 2022

Coronavirus news and updates for Saturday, March 19, 2022

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Saturday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

5:29 p.m.: The return to classrooms for the nation’s schoolchildren has not meant a return to work for many of their parents who, with workdays that outlast school days, are finding crucial after-school programs in short supply.

School-based providers list difficulties hiring and retaining staff as the biggest reasons they have not fully rebounded from pandemic shutdowns and they say they are as frustrated as the parents they are turning away.

“We’re in a constant state of flux. We’ll hire one staffer and another will resign,” said Ester Buendia, assistant director for after-school programs at Northside Independent School District in Texas. “We’ve just not been able to catch up this year.”

Before the pandemic, the San Antonio district’s after-school program had 1,000 staff members serving more than 7,000 students at its roughly 100 elementary and middle schools. Today, there are less than half that number of employees supervising about 3,300 students. More than 1,100 students are on waiting lists for the program, called Learning Tree, which provides academic, recreational and social enrichment until 6:30 p.m. each school day.

It’s difficult to conclude how many parents of school-age children have been unable to resume working outside the home because of gaps in available care. But surveys point to a cycle of parents, mostly mothers, staying home for their children because they are unable to find after-school programming, which then causes staffing shortages at such programs that rely heavily on women to run them.

5:07 p.m.: A regular Saturday anti-vaccine, anti-mask protest at a park in a residential area just south of Calgary’s downtown has moved to City Hall.

Police say about 1,000 protesters gathered at Central Memorial Park in the Beltline this afternoon before walking along the sidewalks to the municipal building in downtown Calgary.

A man who addressed those gathered at City Hall says the protests will continue until all restrictions related to COVID-19 are gone.

The protests in the Beltline neighbourhood came to a head last weekend when residents and others tried to take back their community and the two groups clashed in what police saw as a public safety issue.

It led to an outcry from residents, a special city council meeting, a letter to the police commission from the mayor and, finally, an emergency injunction by the city yesterday.

Police say on social media that a few dozen protesters were still in Central Memorial Park later Saturday when members of the opposing group showed up, but officers were keeping the two groups apart and also had a large presence at City Hall.

1:08 p.m.: A growing number of U.S. states have stopped giving daily updates of the number of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, which, combined with the rise of at-home testing whose results are often not officially registered, is creating a more uneven real-time look at the state of the pandemic.

Although most states still report each weekday, more than a dozen have cut back to once or twice a week, according to a New York Times database. Arizona, Hawaii, Kentucky, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Carolina have moved to weekly reports, as has the District of Columbia. Wyoming has moved to twice-a-week reports. More reductions are expected to come, public health officials have said.

Nationally, the declines in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are tapering off, and some experts are concerned that the drop in reporting could create blind spots if the pandemic begins a resurgence.

Many states have recently dropped pandemic restrictions, even as cases surge again in Europe, which has often served as a bellwether for the pandemic’s U.S. trajectory. Although testing has fallen in some countries, detected cases are up globally about 20 per cent over the past two weeks, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

12:51 p.m.: When President Joe Biden walked maskless into the House chamber for his first State of the Union earlier this month, the White House hoped it would signal the nation had turned a corner on a pandemic that overwhelmed hospitals and killed nearly 1 million nationwide.

Even so, Biden did not claim victory, as he did last summer only to see cases and hospitalizations spike as the U.S. was hammered by the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus. “I cannot promise a new variant won’t come,” Biden said. “But I can promise you we’ll do everything within our power to be ready if it does.”

That balancing act highlights how Biden remains caught between a population eager to go back to normal and the realities of a pandemic that does not appear to be easing up. Not two weeks after his maskless address to Congress, a surge in infections is occurring around the world. In China, a spike in cases, attributed to the extremely contagious omicron variant, has prompted massive shutdowns. In Europe, cases are also on the rise, an ominous sign that yet another surge in infections might be around the corner in the U.S.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain on Thursday acknowledged the “great risk of a new wave.”

Those close to the president have also been catching the virus. Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, tested positive on Tuesday. Ireland’s prime minister, Micheal Martin, tested positive a day later — after attending a gala with U.S. lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who sat maskless beside him.

12:03 p.m.: Scarcely two months after the omicron variant drove coronavirus case numbers to frightening heights in the United States, scientists and health officials are bracing for another swell in the pandemic and, with it, the first major test of the country’s strategy of living with the virus while limiting its impact.

At local, state and federal levels, the nation has been relaxing restrictions and trying to restore a semblance of normalcy. Encouraging Americans to return to pre-pandemic routines, officials are lifting mask and vaccine mandates and showing no inclination of closing down offices, restaurants or theaters.

But scientists are warning that the U.S. isn’t doing enough to prevent a new surge from endangering vulnerable Americans and potentially upending life again.

New pills can treat infections, but federal efforts to buy more of them are in limbo. An aid package in Congress is stalled, even as agencies run out of money for tests and therapeutics. Though less than one-third of the population has the booster shots needed for high levels of protection, the daily vaccination rate has fallen to a low.

While some Americans may never be persuaded to roll up their sleeves, experts said that health officials could be doing a lot more, for example, to get booster shots to the doorsteps of older people who have proved willing to take the initial doses.

11:22 a.m.: A school board in southern Ontario plans to extend its mask mandate beyond the provincial one, even after the government instructed it to drop the public health measure.

The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board says it will enforce mask-wearing until April 1, despite the province lifting mandates in most indoor settings starting Monday.

Ontario’s chief medical officer, Dr. Kieran Moore, sent a letter to school boards Thursday telling them that they must make masking optional, and the board says it also received one from Education Minister Stephen Lecce on Friday.

Board Chair Dawn Danko says the HWDSB welcomed the letter providing added information about “moving through reopening milestones,” but staff and students will still be expected to wear a mask until the end of the month.

She says they can “exercise their choice” by completing a mask exemption form.

11:21 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 613 people in hospital with COVID-19 and 185 people in ICU.

That’s down from 615 hospitalizations and 193 intensive care patients yesterday.

There are 13 more COVID-19 deaths being reported today.

Provincial data show 2,078 new infections, but Ontario’s top doctor has said the actual number is likely 10 times higher than the daily log, since access to PCR testing is restricted.

About seven per cent of long-term care homes in the province have active COVID-19 outbreaks.

Data on school closures isn’t being logged this week due to the March break.

10:53 a.m.: Residents of a neighbourhood just south of Calgary’s downtown say they are used to weekend protests, street parties for hockey playoff runs and other outdoor gatherings.

But the president of the Beltline Neighbourhoods Association said a regular Saturday anti-vaccine, anti-mask protest has turned into a “real toxic mix” that includes white supremacists and other extremists.

“We have a serious problem here,” Peter Oliver said in an interview.

“It’s a whole buffet of different losers.”

10:52 a.m.: Doctors and front-line agencies say COVID-19 has underscored the value of culturally sensitive and community-based health-care services for Indigenous people and the need to continue them past the pandemic.

When Manitoba reported it’s first case of the novel coronavirus on March 12, 2020, places like the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre had to shut their doors. The Winnipeg-based family-resource organization is a fixture for residents in the city’s downtown and surrounding areas.

When regular programming was suspended or shifted online, the organization pivoted its efforts to support the community. It set up a rapid-test site at one of its locations and operated one of two urban Indigenous vaccination clinics.

The clinic provided a bridge between the communities it serves and the health-care system.

“It’s a hard barrier to break because it’s so ingrained and it’s so systemic. It’s coming from such a real, raw place of trauma,” said Rosalyn Boucha, the centre’s communications manager.

“We truly believe that there are people who came in to get tests and their vaccines that wouldn’t have otherwise. because we were able to remove barriers that exist, whether it’s transportation or barriers with booking.”

The clinic also offered a culturally safe space for people to ask questions, get traditional medicine and have a meal.

8:13 a.m.: Sudbury-area school boards are preparing for a return to a “more normal learning environment” when students go back to class after March Break.

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore recently announced that a number of COVID-19 measures would be lifted in schools across the province beginning on March 21.

Vaccination disclosure policies, student cohorting and social distancing, daily on-site confirmation of COVID-19 screening, and mask mandates are just some examples of the measures that will be scrapped.

Although the news will be welcome to some families, local school boards are urging their communities to be kind and considerate to others as everyone adjusts to the changes.

“Students wishing to wear masks are encouraged to do so,” said the Sudbury Catholic District School Board in a letter to parents and guardians dated March 10.

“It will be very important to respect everyone’s choice whether to wear a mask or not and all efforts will be made to continue to promote respectful, welcoming, and inclusive practices.”

8:11 a.m.: When the pandemic led to lockdowns that triggered huge job losses, people in New York City and the surrounding region accumulated a mountain of debt. For many that included utility bills. Residents of New York and New Jersey owe the staggering sum of more than $2.4 billion to utility companies.

Now those companies are using the threat of shut-offs to collect for the first time in two years, and advocates fear that struggling customers will have to choose between heat and electricity and other necessities like food and medicine.

At the start of the pandemic two years ago, as millions of unemployed Americans were unable to pay their bills, state-imposed moratoriums generally barred utilities from shutting off power. But most states, including New York, have lifted those restrictions in recent months. New Jersey’s moratorium, one of the last in effect, expired March 15.

In New York, advocates have pleaded with Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers to use federal pandemic aid to bail out residents who cannot pay. Without a bailout, the state faces “the largest tidal wave of shut-offs in New York history,” said Richard Berkley, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project, an advocacy group.

Saturday 8:08 a.m.: China, which is facing its worst COVID-19 surge since the coronavirus first emerged in the city of Wuhan, on Saturday reported its first deaths from the virus in more than a year.

The two deaths were in the northeastern province of Jilin, according to China’s national health commission. This week, Jilin banned its 24 million residents from leaving the province or traveling between cities because of the surging case numbers there.

China is grappling with sustained outbreaks in two-thirds of its provinces, posing the toughest test yet of its zero-tolerance policy toward the virus. Before Saturday, the country had not reported a COVID-19 death since January 2021. Many experts, however, suspect that some deaths may have gone unreported and that case numbers in general may have been understated by officials.

On Saturday, China reported 3,844 new locally transmitted cases, most of them in Jilin. A week ago, the province was reporting about 100 cases a day. More than 25,000 of the cases reported in China in recent weeks have been of the highly transmissible BA.2 subvariant of omicron.

Read Friday’s coronavirus news.

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