The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Thursday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
10:30 p.m.: Toronto shot above 1,000 COVID-19 daily cases Thursday for the first time since the middle of January, with the spike coming less than one week after the province relaxed “grey” zone restrictions to allow outdoor dining in the city.
The last time Toronto saw more than 1,000 cases in a single day was Jan. 17 at 1,097 — the second deadliest day of the pandemic for the city. That day, there were also 66 new hospitalizations reported and 40 new deaths.
On Thursday, Toronto Public Health reported 1,036 new cases, with 21 new hospitalizations, along with five new deaths.
Part of that daily total was the 260 previous cases added into Toronto’s number because of a “provincial technical issue” with the data.
Leaving out those previous cases, Toronto saw 776 new COVID infections Thursday. The last time the city saw a one-day case count that high was Feb.1 when it saw 961 new daily cases.
On Wednesday, Toronto reported 484 new daily cases.
A “steady rise in cases was inevitable,” said Colin Furness, epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, as the third wave is driven by the B.1.1.7 variant, which is known to be about 50 per cent more contagious. It also leads to more severe illness, including among younger people, as well as a higher risk of death.
The variant grew even while Toronto was under stay-at-home orders, according to Furness.
“That means our heaviest restrictions were not adequate to control growth,” he said.
Read the full story here.
8:45 p.m.: The Ontario government is looking at offering full-time, online learning to students in all grades — even after the pandemic is over, says a consultation report that has prompted an outcry from educators and critics.
At Queen’s Park, Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government “recognizes that the vast majority of children are benefiting from in-class instruction” during the pandemic, and “we believe keeping schools open is fundamental to kids’ health and wellness.”
However, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association warned such a move “is not in the best interest of students.”
President Cathy Abraham said “there are significant negative implications for students and for public education in the government’s proposal, including impacts on reduced student funding levels over the long term, students attending small, rural and remote schools (and) diminished local influence on education.”
She also said boards are “deeply concerned about any proposal that prioritizes cost-cutting or revenue generation over student success and well-being.”
The provincial government is already mandating two online courses for high schools students, though there is an easy opt-out policy.
Read the full story from Kristin Rushowy here.
8:15 p.m.: Only 37 per cent of inmates at the Maplehurst jail in Milton chose to get vaccinated last week, raising questions about how vaccine hesitancy will be addressed in the high-risk population, a court heard Thursday.
Of about 850 inmates at the jail, only 361 were vaccinated over three days last week, Maplehurst deputy superintendant David Whalen testified Thursday in a sentencing hearing in Brampton over Zoom.
“Most inmates chose not to after lengthy disccusions …,” Whalen testified.
He did not elaborate in court on what information inmates were provided and how far in advance, or why inmates might have chosen not to be vaccinated.
A spokeperson for the Ministry of the Solicitor-General said Thursday that, in addition to information provided by jail health care staff, Halton Emergency Medical Services spoke to inmates about the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine, and that Halton Public Health provided fact sheets about the vaccine and common myths.
But, according to calls received by jail hotlines operated by the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project and Criminalization and Punishment Education Project, inmates say they aren’t getting enough reliable information to make decisions and address fears about side-effects or even whether the vaccines they are offered are the same as the ones being used in the general population.
Read the full story from Alyshah Hasham here.
7:40 p.m. The Ontario government is moving Timiskaming Health Unit to the red control level. The decision was made at the request of the local medical officer of health due to the concerning trends in public health indicators in the region.
“As a result of a rapid worsening in trends of key health indicators in the Timiskaming region, we are making the difficult but necessary decision to immediately move the region to a new level with stronger public health measures in place,” said Christine Elliott, deputy premier and minister of health.
From March 16 to 22, the region’s case rate increased from 3.1 to 24.5 cases per 100,000 people, an increase of 700 per cent.
The public health unit also reports that additional cases are expected over the next few days.
7:30 p.m.: The pace at which Ontario is vaccinating against COVID-19 isn’t fast enough to prevent the need for restrictive public health measures in the coming weeks as variants drive new cases of the virus ever higher, infectious disease experts warn.
The province’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table estimates that as much as 55 per cent of all cases in the province are variants of concern (VOCs).
And, on Thursday, Ontario reported 2,380 new cases, the first time the province’s daily case count has gone above 2,000 since Jan. 30. (The province provided the caveat that the count is higher by about 280 cases due to a catch-up in data in its monitoring system, but even accounting for that, the case count is above 2,000).
“Every infection we see out there needs to be handled as if it’s a variant of concern,” said Dr. Peter Juni, an epidemiologist and scientific director of the science advisory table.
Juni noted that he believes the province will have to enact restrictions, at least in the Golden Horseshoe area, to keep the spread of variants under control.
The science advisory table estimates the effective reproduction number of variants of concern is 1.26, meaning for every infectious person, 1.26 people will become infected on average.
Read the full story from Kenyon Wallace here.
7:26 p.m. Moderna will delay the shipment of more than half a million doses to Canada because of backlogs the federal government says are unrelated to tighter European export controls, The Star’s Tonda MacCharles reports.
Procurement Minister, Anita Anand, said late Thursday that, “due to a backlog in its quality-assurance process,” Moderna informed her it will delay shipment of 590,400 doses that were due to arrive in Canada this weekend.
Anand said Moderna assured her the doses would arrive no later than Thursday next week, and the backlog won’t affect future deliveries, including the previously scheduled shipment of 855,600 doses in the week of April 5.
An official insisted Europe has already authorized the export of the doses and the delay was unrelated to the growing concern around EU exports. Canada took delivery of 255,600 doses of Moderna on Wednesday.
6:30 p.m. COVID-19 cases have leapt to 800 in British Columbia, the highest daily rate since Nov. 28, The Canadian Press reports.
A joint statement from provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, and Health Minister, Adrian Dix, says there are also 191 new confirmed variant cases, according to CP.
Henry said during a news conference earlier Thursday that variants are taking over the infection rate.
There have also been five more deaths, bringing the death toll since the start of the pandemic to 1,446.
6:20 p.m. The head of the Saskatchewan Health Authority says it’s unacceptable for people in Regina to be waiting up to four hours to get tested for COVID-19 at a drive-through clinic, The Canadian Press reports.
Scott Livingstone says the site has seen some of its highest volumes to date in the pandemic over the past three days, according to CP.
Regina is dealing with a spike in COVID-19 cases, many of which are thought to be from more infectious variants of the virus.
Livingstone says hours will be expanded at the drive-through site as the health authority scales up its testing capacity in the city.
He says the spread of more transmissible mutations of the virus such as the strain first detected in the United Kingdom, known as B.1.1.7, is leading to younger people in intensive care.
Of Saskatchewan’s 1,064 variant cases, 895 have been found in and around Regina.
6 p.m. Alberta is reporting an increase in new cases of COVID-19, The Canadian Press reports.
The province says there are 764 new infections, according to CP.
Of those, 191 are variant cases.
There have also been three additional deaths linked to the illness.
There are 294 people in hospital with COVID-19, 55 of them are in intensive care.
5:08 p.m. More questions are being raised about how long second shots of the COVID-19 vaccine can be delayed for seniors and other immuno-compromised people, The Canadian Press reports.
The federal body that advises how vaccines be deployed said Thursday it’s reviewing a Vancouver study that found long-term care residents had a weaker immune response to their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine than younger healthy adults, according to CP.
After supplies slowed to a trickle earlier this year, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization said provinces and territories can delay second doses by as long as four months.
That’s instead of the recommended schedule that spaces out the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines by three to four weeks, and the AstraZeneca product by four to 12 weeks.
Committee chair, Dr. Caroline Quach, said Thursday that NACI is looking at the Vancouver research, which found a weaker antibody response among older recipients but did not measure whether seniors were more likely to fall sick or die.
She said the findings will be assessed along with data from Quebec and the United Kingdom.
“What is so difficult with this disease is that there is no correlate of protection. That means that the presence and quantity of antibody present does not mean protection, or lack thereof,” Quach said in an email to The Canadian Press.
5:03 p.m. Canada didn’t see the pandemic coming, underestimated it initially, and, as late as last November, still lacked the data to fully track or grasp its actual spread, the auditor general Karen Hogan has found, according to The Canadian Press
A withered Public Health Agency dithered on pandemic preparedness, the federal auditor general has concluded, leaving officials no choice but to scramble to respond to COVID-19, CP reports.
The auditor general found that if such a scramble is to be avoided in future, it’s time for an independent review of the eternal Canadian conundrum: why can’t all levels of government work together better?
“It seems that agreeing on who will do what and when; who will report what to whom, and who will take the lead is persistently difficult,” she wrote in the introduction to three audit reports on the government’s pandemic response.
“This is not an efficient way of working, nor is it a productive way to serve Canadians.”
Hogan’s audits of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Canada Border Services and the departments in charge of billions of support programs provide a sweeping narrative of the Liberal government’s reaction from the day a strange new virus was observed in China and over the surreal months that would follow.
“The government cannot ignore long-standing issues; they do not go away,” she wrote.
“We will never be able to tell Canadians what would have happened if the preparedness issues had been better addressed before the pandemic hit and if all plans had been updated and tested as they needed to be.”
Meanwhile, as public health authorities were rushing to adapt, those working on financial aid programs switched gears as fast as possible to focus on getting help out the door, she found.
The economic programs Hogan reviewed, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB, and the wage subsidy, were crafted, executed and delivered with unmatched speed.
The Public Health Agency of Canada set itself up for challenges responding to COVID-19 by failing to implement recommendations from previous health emergencies fully, dating all the way back to the SARS crisis of 2003, Hogan found.
Emergency plans supposed to be routinely updated were not. Aging technology was not replaced. Mechanisms to gather and share surveillance data with the world, the government and the provinces were lacking.
Meanwhile, as the novel coronavirus began to spread globally last January, the Public Health Agency failed to do long-term risk assessments to Canada, focusing instead on short-term risks, and kept telling Canadians the risk to Canada was low.
Once Canada was on alert, Canada Border Agency moved fast to help lock down the border, but public health still wasn’t up to speed, Hogan found.
Between May 5 to June 30, well after the border had been closed to all but essential travel, the agency had no idea whether 66 per cent of those who were supposed to quarantine upon arrival were actually doing it.
Fewer than half of those suspected of not following quarantine orders were referred to law enforcement, the audit found.
Trouble collecting data on incoming travellers was only one of the gaps in how much federal health officials knew about the spread of COVID-19 in Canada, as the data filtering up from the provinces was also incomplete.
In response to Hogan’s work, the Public Health Agency said it has begun implementing its own changes with an eye toward having better systems in place within the next two years.
5 p.m. Health officials are announcing another 168 new COVID-19 cases in Saskatchewan, The Canadian Press reports.
It says there are 154 people in hospital, including 22 in intensive care, according to CP.
Regina and surrounding communities are reporting 895 cases of more infectious COVID-19 variants, the most anywhere in the province.
4:30 p.m. Residents of assisted-living and long-term care homes in B.C. will soon have regular opportunities for social visits that have been restricted since last March, The Canadian Press reports.
Provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, says B.C. is at a point where the benefits of allowing social interactions starting April 1 outweigh the risks of continued outbreaks, according to CP.
Henry says the limit of a single designated visitor for each resident will be removed and up to two adults plus a child will be allowed to visit their loved one at a given time.
She says visits may take place in residents’ rooms, without monitoring by staff, and touching will be allowed provided people wear masks and wash their hands.
Henry also announced further details about changes to public health rules that will allow limited indoor and outdoor religious gatherings in the coming weeks.
3:42 p.m. A provincial shutdown, similar to one imposed when the pandemic hit, is needed to curb the alarming spread of COVID-19 variants in Ontario, the scientific director of an expert panel advising the province said Thursday, The Canadian Press reports.
Currently, even the strictest level of the province’s pandemic framework isn’t enough to reduce rising infections from more contagious variants, said Dr. Peter Juni of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, according to CP.
“This pandemic has never been under the control since it started to (take) hold in Ontario, and that’s the challenge,” Juni said in an interview.
“We need stronger, more strict public health measures to keep the new variants contained enough to avoid tremendous challenges for the healthcare system.”
Provincial officials have said variants of concern now make up 50 per cent of the province’s daily cases of COVID-19.
The variant first detected in Britain is the most common one in Ontario, although variants first detected in South Africa and Brazil have also appeared across the province.
While Ontario’s vaccination effort continues, the province can’t move fast enough to protect the population from the variants that have also driven dire waves of infection across Europe, Juni said.
The province should move quickly to impose strict measures to clamp down on variants, he said, while encouraging safe outdoor activities where people stay at least two metres apart.
“If we now do everything right, this will be the last time that we need to go into harsh restrictions,” he said.
The province’s top doctor has said variants of COVID-19 are causing more severe illness, leading to intensive care admissions and deaths.
Dr. David Williams also noted this week that more young people appear to be getting more severely ill from the variants.
Ontario reported 2,380 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, although the Ministry of Health said the number was inflated by about 280 cases due to a data-processing issue.
Ontario also reported 17 more deaths linked to the virus.
A total of 1,755,596 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given in the province so far.
2:25 p.m.: Nova Scotia is reporting four new cases of COVID-19 today, The Canadian Press reports.
Health officials say two cases are travel-related and a third involves a contact of a previously reported infection, according to CP.
Officials are also reporting a new case that was identified at Millwood High School in Middle Sackville.
They say the person involved was not in school today and that the school building will be closed for deep cleaning.
Nova Scotia has 25 active reported cases of COVID-19.
2 p.m.: Health officials are imposing circuit-breaker measures in an effort to contain an outbreak of COVID-19 in an area of northwestern New Brunswick, The Canadian Press reports.
As of 6 p.m. this evening, the city of Edmundston and the upper Madawaska region, on the borders of Quebec and Maine, will revert to the red level of the province’s pandemic response plan, according to CP.
The rest of the province will remain at the yellow level.
Officials are reporting 30 new cases of COVID-19 today, 24 in the Edmundston region, five in the Saint John area and one in the Bathurst region.
There are now 89 active cases in the province, and three patients are in hospital.
1:40 p.m.: The U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines worldwide has announced supply delays involving a key Indian manufacturer, a major setback for the ambitious rollout aimed at helping low- and middle-income countries vaccinate their populations and fight the pandemic.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and its partners said Thursday that the Serum Institute of India, a pivotal vaccine maker behind the COVAX program, will face increasing domestic demands as coronavirus infections surge.
“Delays in securing supplies of SII-produced COVID-19 vaccine doses are due to the increased demand for COVID-19 vaccines in India,” Gavi said.
1:35 p.m.: Manitoba is reporting one new COVID-19 death and 111 new cases.
However, six cases from unspecified dates have been removed due to data correction, for a net increase of 105.
One earlier death has also been removed due to data correction.
12:55 p.m.: The federal Liberals have introduced legislation to provide $7.2 billion to cash-strapped provinces, territories and municipalities, with more than half going to immediate health-care needs.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says COVID-19 has placed extreme pressure on health-care systems across the country and Canadians need help urgently.
She says $4 billion, to flow through the Canada Health Transfer, will help ensure health systems do not buckle under the continued strain of the pandemic.
The bill also proposes $1 billion to support the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination programs.
12:30 p.m.: Health Canada’s chief medical adviser says the three cases of blood clotting reported so far out of 300,000 Canadians who have received at least one dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca have no apparent link to the vaccine.
Dr. Supriya Sharma says one case involved a pulmonary embolism and two cases involved a stroke, but none resembled the very rare brain blood clot associated with extremely low platelet counts identified in Europe, where a relative handful of cases have stirred fears.
Sharma says clinicians and doctors in Canada are conducting a “causality assessment” for all three cases, establishing so far that one of the two stroke cases was likely due to causes unrelated to the vaccine.
She says blood clotting rates are the same or even higher among people who have not received the AstraZeneca vaccine than for
12 p.m. The Manitoba government is promising $6 million in financial support for the arts and culture sector, which has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Premier Brian Pallister says museums, festivals, cultural facilities, artists and musical groups will be among the eligible recipients.
COVID-19 restrictions have forced concert halls, theatres, cinemas and other facilities to remain closed.
11:30 a.m. Health Canada’s chief medical adviser says she’s “concerned” about reports of vaccine hesitancy among health-care workers.
Dr. Supriya Sharma says vaccine acceptance tops 90 per cent in some parts of the country, but lags in others.
She says it’s important to dig into why hospital and long-term care workers are leery, and to give them more information addressing their worries.
Sharma says it’s “completely understandable” that people have questions as researchers study whether there is any link between the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and a very small number of rare brain blood clots, but adds that no incidents have been reported in Canada.
11:15 a.m. Quebec is reporting 945 new COVID-19 cases and four more deaths linked to the novel coronavirus, including one in the previous 24 hours.
Health authorities say 496 people are in hospital, a drop of 12 patients, with 117 requiring intensive care, down by one.
The province gave 39,814 doses of vaccine on Wednesday for a total of 1,065,823 since the COVID-19 vaccination campaign began.
Quebec has reported a total of 305,435 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 10,630 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic and has 7,173 active cases.
11 a.m. The major-general overseeing the country’s vaccine program says there is “no indication” that shipments of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada will be delayed, but adds that discussions are ongoing.
Media reports Wednesday said India has halted exports of Covishield, the version of AstraZeneca produced at the country’s Serum Institute.
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India has already supplied 500,000 doses of a planned two million to Canada, with another one million still slated for arrival in mid-April followed by a final shipment a month or so later.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin’s remarks to reporters echoed those of International Trade Minister Mary Ng, who said Wednesday there is nothing to indicate Canada’s supply chains will be disrupted.
10:18 a.m. The province is reporting 1,016 new cases in Toronto, 294 in Peel, 244 in York Region and 152 in Ottawa. As of 8 p.m. yesterday, 1,755,596 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
10:15 a.m. Ontario is reporting 2,380 COVID-19 cases Thursday with 17 deaths. The seven-day average is up to 1,794 cases daily or 86 weekly per 100k, and up to 11.1 deaths per day. Labs report 60,077 completed tests, which is average for a Thursday — with 3.8 per cent positivity rate, the most for a Thursday since Jan. 21.
10:07 a.m. Visitor restrictions imposed by a group home during the pandemic discriminated against a 14-year-old boy with disabilities, Ontario’s human rights tribunal has found.
It was the first decision by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario on the “complex issues regarding the role of human rights in the middle of a public health care crisis.”
“Human rights protections do not go away in a pandemic,” adjudicator Jennifer Scott wrote in her decision released on Tuesday.
Pamela Libralesso and her family did not see her son, who lives in a small group home in Barrie, Ont., with round-the-clock care, for six months last year.
10 a.m. Health Canada has updated the product label for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to warn about blood clotting, but says reports of those events are “very rare” — and in Canada nonexistent.
The label warning follows reports from Europe that AstraZeneca might cause a rare type of blood clot in the brain in a very small number of patients.
Health Canada’s chief medical adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma says she agrees with European health authorities that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh any potential risks, and that all four vaccines approved for use in Canada are considered safe.
Sharma says Health Canada is keeping an eye on developments across the Atlantic, where researchers say they have identified a possible cause for the blood clots, but little information is available so far.
She says about 300,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccine, made at the Serum Institute of India, have been administered in Canada to date, with no serious health events reported.
9 a.m. As a personal support worker in a long-term-care home, Lily has been eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine since the first shots were administered back in December.
But she hasn’t been vaccinated yet because she’s afraid — not of the vaccine itself, but that getting it could lead to losing her job or being deported.
Lily is among the tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants living and working in Toronto. She doesn’t have an OHIP card and she doesn’t want her employer to discover her lack of immigration status. She also worries that if she discloses her personal information to public health officials it might be shared with immigration authorities, leading to her detention or removal from Canada.
“I’m not going to take the risk of sharing my information,” she said in a phone interview. (Lily is a pseudonym. The Star agreed not to publish her real name or where she works.)
Read the full story from the Star’s Brendan Kennedy
8:53 a.m. A team of international and Chinese scientists is poised to report on its joint search for the origins of the coronavirus that sparked a pandemic after it was first detected in China over a year ago — with four theories being considered, and one the clear frontrunner, according to experts.
The lengthy report is being published after months of wrangling, notably between U.S. and Chinese governments, over how the outbreak emerged, while scientists try to keep their focus on a so-far fruitless search for the origin of a microbe that has killed over 2.7 million people and stifled economies worldwide.
It wasn’t immediately clear when the report will be released after its publication was delayed earlier this month. By many accounts, the report could offer few concrete answers, and may raise further questions.
It will offer a first glance in writing from 10 international epidemiologists, data scientists, veterinary, lab and food safety experts who visited China and the city of Wuhan — where a market was seen as the initial epicenter — earlier this year to work with Chinese counterparts who pulled up the bulk of early data.
Critics have raised questions about the objectivity of the team, insisting that China’s government had a pivotal say over its composition. Defenders of the World Health Organization, which assembled the team, say it can’t simply parachute in experts to tell a country what to do — let alone one as powerful as China.
8 a.m. A player on Germany’s national soccer team tested positive for the coronavirus ahead of Thursday’s World Cup qualifying game against Iceland.
The German soccer federation said the unnamed player was in isolation and was not experiencing symptoms. Local health officials will now decide on any further measures which could affect the game.
“This news is obviously bitter so close to the game, for the coaches and the whole team,” Germany general manager Oliver Bierhoff said.
Bierhoff added that he was optimistic the virus was unlikely to spread because the team had taken measures to reduce contact between players.
“Of course, we will implement any requirements the authorities may have,” he said.
Germany is playing its first game since a 6-0 loss to Spain in the Nations League in November. That was the team’s worst-ever defeat in a competitive game, and worst in any game since 1931.
7:50 a.m. Services at a long-standing mental health clinic for Portuguese-speaking patients at Toronto Western Hospital are winding down, and the clinic’s closure for psychiatric referrals is raising alarms about the future of other language-based services in the city.
The clinic’s sole Portuguese-speaking psychiatrist is leaving the practice in June and will not be replaced, according to University Health Network. This follows the retirement of Toronto Western’s only Spanish-speaking psychiatrist last year, whose role has not been continued.
UHN also runs the Asian Initiative in Mental Health Clinic, which continues to provide psychiatric care for patients in Cantonese and Mandarin. All programs fall under UHN’s community care clinics.
But concerns are mounting that the closure of the Portuguese clinic may signal a larger shift in how mental health services are delivered for vulnerable, language-dependent patients.
Read the full story from the Star’s Nadine Yousif
7:40 a.m. A second school in the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) will temporarily close this week due to COVID-19 cases among its students.
Classes at Our Lady of Victory Catholic school, at 70 Guestville Ave. in Toronto, will not resume in person after 12 COVID-19 cases were reported among students in the past two weeks.
Toronto Public Health (TPH) announced their recommendation of temporary dismissal of all cohorts of the school on Monday evening, following their investigation.
“We will keep the school community informed as soon as the reopening date is confirmed,” TPH tweeted.
Read the full story from the Star’s Rhythm Sachdeva
7:30 a.m. Conducting an orchestra is among the most rarefied and coveted positions in the performing arts. But during the pandemic, it’s a job that’s been upended like everyone else’s.
“It’s very unsettling because we don’t know how to do our jobs in the way we’ve always done them,” says Rosemary Thomson, Music Director of the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra. “But there’s two sides to that coin.”
She and some of Canada’s most innovative conductors are not only learning new ways to perform on the podium — virtually, masked, distanced — they’re experimenting with new ways to make the epic sound of the orchestra relevant and meaningful in their communities, something that wasn’t always easy to do before COVID-19, when performances were often planned years in advance.
6:22 a.m.: Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows COVID-19-related hospitalizations in Canada cost $23,000 per stay — about four times as much as the average.
CIHI says the average length of stay for a COVID-related hospitalization in Canada was two weeks.
The agency examined data from from January to November 2020, but did not include Quebec.
In that time period, the estimated total cost of COVID-19-related hospitalizations in Canada was more than $317 million.
There were nearly 14,000 hospital stays for patients with a diagnosis of COVID-19 in Canada between last January and November, along with more than 85,400 emergency department visits for COVID-19.
Of the 13,906 COVID-related hospitalizations analyzed, CIHI found that 57.1 per cent were discharged home while 18.7 per cent (2,605) died in hospital.
6:19 a.m.: Brazil has reached 300,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and become the second nation to top that figure. The United States hit the same milestone on Dec. 14, but it has a larger population.
Wednesday’s coronavirus figures from the Brazilian health ministry added another 2,009 deaths to the country’s tally, which local media say is an undercount.
On Tuesday, Brazil hit a single-day record of 3,251 COVID-19 deaths and authorities fear that April could be as grim as March in the country’s overwhelmed hospitals.
Brazil added 100,000 deaths to its tally in only 75 days, a spike health experts have blamed on a lack of political co-ordination, new variants that spread more easily and a disregard for health protocols in many parts of the country.
6:18 a.m.: The U.S. has surpassed 30 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
Coronavirus cases nationwide reached 30,001,245 on Wednesday, nearly three months after the country hit 20 million.
COVID-19 related deaths now total more than 545,000.
The new milestone comes as public health experts show cautious optimism three months into the U.S. vaccination rollout. It is believed that 70% of Americans 65 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine and COVID-19 deaths are below 1,000 a day on average for the first time since November.
The federal government is dramatically ramping up vaccine production and several states have already expanded vaccination eligibility to people age 16 and up.
More than 124 million cases have been confirmed worldwide.
6:17 a.m.: Utah’s mask mandate will end April 10 after the Republican governor signed a bill that lays out a new timeline for lifting some of the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.
Masks orders will remain in place for schools and gatherings of more than 50 people. Businesses can also choose to require them.
Gov. Spencer Cox signed the measure on Wednesday, the same day that vaccinations opened to all people aged 16 and older.
New coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Utah have been on a downward trend since January. According to state data, more than 438,000 of the state’s 3.2 million residents have been fully vaccinated.
6:17 a.m.: Pakistan’s president said he hoped his country will soon overcome the coronavirus pandemic but asked people to continue adhering to social distancing rules.
President Arif Alvi made his comments in a televised speech Thursday after witnessing a military parade in the capital, Islamabad.
Authorities provided face masks to all those who witnessed the military parade.
His comments came shortly after Pakistan reported 3,946 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, one of the highest increases in recent months.
On Thursday, Pakistan also reported 63 additional deaths from coronavirus, increasing the country’s total fatalities to 14,028 among 640,988 cases since last year.
Alvi’s remarks came a day after Pakistan’s top health official Faisal Sultan said his country will purchase 1 million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine and 60,000 doses of the vaccine made by Chinese company CanSino Biologics.
A day ago, Pakistan government ordered the closure of schools in the capital, Islamabad and in several high-risk cities until April 11.
6:13 a.m.: A team of international and Chinese scientists is poised to report on its joint search for the origins of the coronavirus that sparked a pandemic after it was first detected in China over a year ago — with four theories being considered, and one the clear front-runner, according to experts.
The lengthy report is being published after months of wrangling, notably between U.S. and Chinese governments, over how the outbreak emerged, while scientists try to keep their focus on a so-far fruitless search for the origin of a microbe that has killed over 2.7 million people and stifled economies worldwide.
It wasn’t immediately clear when the report will be released after its publication was delayed earlier this month. By many accounts, the report could offer few concrete answers, and may raise further questions.
It will offer a first glance in writing from 10 international epidemiologists, data scientists, veterinary, lab and food safety experts who visited China and the city of Wuhan — where a market was seen as the initial epicentre — earlier this year to work with Chinese counterparts who pulled up the bulk of early data.
Critics have raised questions about the objectivity of the team, insisting that China’s government had a pivotal say over its composition. Defenders of the World Health Organization, which assembled the team, say it can’t simply parachute in experts to tell a country what to do — let alone one as powerful as China.
Read the full story from the Associated Press here.
6:12 a.m.: The White House announced Thursday that it is dedicating another $10 billion to try to drive up vaccination rates in low-income, minority and rural enclaves throughout the country.
The effort, which is funded through the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed earlier this month, will include $6 billion in funding for community health centres to expand COVID-19 vaccinations, testing and other preventive health care for populations at higher risk for the virus.
President Joe Biden’s administration, which will start distributing the money in April to nearly 1,400 centres across the country, said health centres can also use the funding to modify and improve infrastructure and add mobile units.
In addition, the Biden administration said it is allotting $3 billion to bolster “vaccine confidence.” The money, which will be parceled out to 64 jurisdictions, can be used by rural, faith-based organizations and by food assistance and housing nonprofits in high-poverty communities to conduct door-to-door outreach and education efforts to urge eligible people to schedule vaccination appointments.
6:11 a.m.: AstraZeneca insists that its COVID-19 vaccine is strongly effective even after counting additional illnesses in its disputed U.S. study, the latest in an extraordinary public rift with American officials.
In a late-night news release Wednesday, the drugmaker said it had recalculated data from that study and concluded the vaccine is 76% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, instead of the 79% it had reported earlier in the week.
Just a day earlier, an independent panel that oversees the study had accused AstraZeneca of cherry-picking data to tout the protection offered by its vaccine. The panel, in a harsh letter to the company and to U.S. health leaders, said the company had left out some COVID-19 cases that occurred in the study, a move that could erode trust in the science.
Some experts said the new data provided by AstraZeneca was “reassuring” and that the information was likely solid enough for U.S. regulators to authorize the vaccine.
6:09 a.m.: Scientists at the National Advisory Committee on Immunization are reviewing research that suggests people who have been infected with COVID-19 can turbocharge their antibodies with just one dose of a vaccine.
The committee is “actively reviewing evidence on the protection offered by one dose for those previously infected, and whether a second dose continues to be necessary,” says a statement from the panel.
Caroline Quach-Thanh said the committee is “debating” the question of how many vaccine doses someone who has been infected with COVID-19 requires.
“France and Quebec have said only one,” said Quach-Thanh, chair of the committee, in an email.
Studies have suggested people who have had COVID-19 may produce the required antibody response with just one dose of a vaccine.
A letter in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month says the question of whether one dose is enough “requires investigation.” It’s written by 32 researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York after conducting a small study.
It suggests people who have been infected with the novel coronavirus may produce 10 to 45 times as many antibodies after the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines compared with someone who hasn’t had COVID-19. The research is yet to be peer reviewed.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations in Canada as of a a.m. ET on Thursday, March 25, 2021.
In Canada, the provinces are reporting 171,761 new vaccinations administered for a total of 4,393,876 doses given. Nationwide, 642,821 people or 1.7 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The provinces have administered doses at a rate of 11,593.562 per 100,000.
There were 115,830 new vaccines delivered to the provinces and territories for a total of 5,240,300 doses delivered so far. The provinces and territories have used 83.85 per cent of their available vaccine supply.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 4 a.m. ET on Thursday, March 25, 2021.
There are 946,370 confirmed cases in Canada (37,100 active, 886,511 resolved, 22,759 deaths). The total case count includes 13 confirmed cases among repatriated travellers.
There were 4,051 new cases Wednesday. The rate of active cases is 97.62 per 100,000 people. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 27,121 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 3,874.
There were 24 new reported deaths Wednesday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 203 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 29. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.08 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 59.88 per 100,000 people.
There have been 26,858,481 tests completed.